This is the story of a little windmill that couldn't.

It stands, at least for now, on a hill overlooking Kittery's trash transfer station. When smiling state and local officials cut the ribbon last fall, they hoped it would generate 90,000 kilowatts of electricity per year, and in the process teach the kids at the nearby middle school a thing or two about the wonders of green, alternative energy.

But now it's teaching a different lesson:

"Don't set people's expectations too high," said a rueful Town Manager Jonathan Carter.

Much as he hated to do it, Carter issued a press release this week announcing that, eight months after it went up, Kittery's wind turbine demonstration project is coming down. The problem: not enough wind.

That's the bad news. The good news is that Entegrity Wind Systems of Boulder, Colo., will honor its guarantee and refund every penny of the $191,028 the town paid for the EW50 wind turbine once it's been dismantled and carried away, sometime this winter.

No, this is by no means the death knell for wind power. Today, two state police-escorted caravans are creeping across central and northern Maine with huge turbine components bound for TransCanada's 132-megawatt Kibby Wind Power Project in Skinner Township and First Wind's 60-megawatt Rollins Wind Project near Lincoln.

But Kittery's much smaller tilt toward windmills, along with an equally disappointing Entegrity project in downtown Saco, is a cautionary tale to those who think that turning wind into wattage is as simple as erecting a tower, attaching a turbine and watching the blades go round and round.

A visit to Kittery's windmill site Wednesday morning revealed what happens when Mother Nature fails to provide at least a 10 mph breeze: The three blades, frozen in mid-air 125 feet above the ground, were producing nary enough juice to light a flashlight.

So why did Kittery build its windmill in the first place? And, more importantly, why did it fail so miserably?

Carter said the wind project grew out of the town's Energy Advisory Committee, which spent a lot of time studying the breezes around the transfer station before putting out a request for proposals in 2007.

In addition to measuring the wind from the top of a baling building at the transfer station, Carter said, the committee pored over wind charts, available on the Internet, indicating that the site had enough wind to turn a 50-kilowatt turbine to the tune of 70,000, maybe even 90,000, kilowatts a year.

Enter Entegrity, which beat out nine other bidders with the EW50 – a small-to-midsize windmill that met the town's $200,000 budget and included a money-back guarantee if the annual output fell short of 70,000 kilowatts.

"They too went to the Web sites, they too looked at our calibrations, and they too concluded that the site had promise," Carter said.

And alas, they too were wrong.

Eight months into its first year, Carter said, the windmill has generated only 10,458 kilowatts – less than 15 percent of the projected annual output. After a recent visit to the site by Entegrity President Jim Heath and other company officials, Carter said, the blame was laid on not just insufficient wind, but also on the trees and other "clutter" surrounding the site that tend to disrupt whatever wind does come through.

Meaning that for all the goodwill the project generated – including the 24/7 Web site, used as a real-time teaching tool for students at the nearby Shapleigh Middle School – its chances of paying for itself in the projected 10 to 15 years are dim to none.

"Yes, it was a disappointment," Carter said. But, he added, the town at least had the good sense to "align itself with a very good company" that will honor its commitment to take back the windmill and return the town's money.

Contacted Wednesday at Entegrity's manufacturing plant in breezy Prince Edward...