After installing Fujitsu ductless minisplits (heat pumps) to provide nearly all of our heating and cooling (*), Claire and I just signed are signing with Mass Energy Alliance and New England Wind to get 100% of our electricity from their growing cooperative of wind turbines, including Gloucester, Scituate, Ipswich, and Hull.

Some of these turbines are downright gorgeous!

And look forward to using power from Cape Wind when it comes online, and taking a tour of the wind farm!

(*) The heat pumps will provide all heating and cooling except if there is a power outage, or when temperatures outside drop below 7 degrees Fahrenheit. In the latter case, they gradually lose efficiency until -3 Fahrenheit, where they no longer are effective. Our backup power is provided by oil, and the oil furnace has it’s electricity backed up by a propane-powered generator. That generator also has enough capacity for our sump pump, refrigerator, microwave, house lights and computers. We don’t expect these circumstances very often. If they do become common, we’ll think of installing solar panels in our yard in addition to portions of our roof. Thus, the vast majority of our power is coming from carbon free sources. (In full disclosure, we continue to have a problem with heating our water. It seems necessary to run the oil furnace in order to have it on “hot standby” when it’s needed. We can displace the need for its water, but it still needs to run. We’re pondering that and, have, in meantime, turned the temperature of the water down as low as we can possibly manage.)