The wind turbine project began approximately 2½ years ago when the City decided to apply for grants that were specifically for the purpose of reducing the cost of electricity used by the City and also utilizing green energy in lieu of carbon produced electricity. The City ended up applying for two grants for two wind turbines. One grant was through the State Energy Conservation Office (SECO) for the Waste Water Treatment Plant and the other was through the Community Development Block Grant program for the Water Treatment Plant. The City was notified it was eligible for two grants, but could only choose one.

The City went with the SECO grant because the CDBG grant offered an incentive to provide a large portion of the matching funds that the City was originally scheduled to pay, which reduced the out of pocket cost to the city.  The out of pocket cost to the City is $19,500. Special electrical metering equipment, transformers and switching had to be installed by AEP before the turbine could be started.

On February 21st representatives of Northern Power (the manufacturer), Cascade Construction and Kent Power (the engineering and construction firms), American Electric Power (AEP), Hayes Electric of Port Lavaca (electrical sub-contractor), the City and a few citizens were present when the turbine was checked for proper operation, generation and safety features. Since February 21st the turbine has gone through several phases of testing, adjusting and minor changes.

The City receives its electric bills approximately one month from read date and it will take a couple of months to determine the average savings. However, in the last billing, the turbine had run less than 10 days and the Waste Water Treatment electricity bill was $500 less than previous. The average monthly electricity bill for the Waste Water Treatment plant is approximately $2,000 monthly. As of April 9th the Wind Turbine has produced 18,234 KW hours.