Eisenhower Middle School students participated in a blade signing ceremony on Monday for two wind turbines that will be in operation at the school next month.

A third turbine is expected to be built at Clay High School in the spring.

“The foundations are already poured for the first two turbines,” Dean Sandwisch, director of business affairs for the Oregon City Schools District, said to The Press. “They’re curing and will actually be erected next week at Eisenhower.”

Signing the blade from left are Adrienne Fischer, Kayla Villareal, Marissa Migilori, Morgan Markus, Danielle Madison, Miranda Combs(signer), and Christian Soto. (Photo courtesy of Deanna Dunn/Innovations Portrait Studio)

The two 100 kilowatt turbines are expected to conserve energy and provide savings in utility costs for the district.

Toledo Edison will transfer power to the turbines on January 3 and 4, he said.

Edison will continue to provide a small percentage of power to Eisenhower and Clay schools.

“After the first week of January, the turbines will actually go into production,” he said.

The turbines are expected to generate two-thirds of the power consumed at Eisenhower, according to Sandwisch.

Construction of a 900 kilowatt turbine at Clay High School, which will generate up to 85-percent of power at the school, will be in April, said Sandwisch.

“It’s a pretty large machine,” he said. “It’s about 283-feet high.”

The district had planned to build two 750 kilowatt turbines at Clay after Oregon City Council approved the permit, he said.

“But Unison, the manufacturer of the machines, would only provide turbines for wind farms. And we are not a wind farm. So we had to search out a new manufacturer,” he explained.

A company out of Germany instead is going to provide Clay with a 900 kilowatt turbine.

“The 900 follows the same specs as far as the height and the blade length. It just generates more. It’s more powerful. It really fits our campus a little bit better because we were worried about overproduction and feeding back into the grid. It gives us the ability to be sloppy and inefficient, and we don’t want to do that. We want to be as efficient as we can. I think the 85-percent will still allow us to look for efficiencies in lighting and wherever we can still save energy,” he said.

“Very shortly after the first of the year,” he added, “we’ll be pinning down all the permits and who the contractors are going to be. But in April, we’ll have a ceremony for the commissioning of that turbine,” he said.

The turbines are expected to save the district between $2 million to $4 million in utility costs over a 20 year period, he said.

The district will lease power from SUREnergy, a Sandusky wind energy company, which owns the turbines, he said.

The Lucas County Port Authority underwrote $3.5 million in bonds to finance the project, he said.

“Our lease payments will be equal to or less than what we currently pay Edison,” he said.

A small residential wind turbine was installed at Clay a few years ago for research, said Sandwisch.

“It’s been running at about 140-percent of what it was designed to do because of the amount of wind. It currently powers our concession stand at the soccer field and part of the bus maintenance garage,” he said.

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