It’s the winter of year 2016, and somewhere in the ocean south of Martha’s Vineyard, 17 turbines are turning in the cold wind, generating enough electricity to meet all the power needs of the Island.

They are not owned by some profit-driven corporation, these turbines, but by the residents of this place. And people’s power bills are about half what they were in the bad old days when power was imported from dirty, fossil-fuel-burning power stations on the mainland, and $80 odd million of Island money was exported each year in return.

That’s the vision of the future. But as to whether that vision becomes a reality, that could well be decided in the next few months.

Sometime well before the end of the year, maybe as early as the end of next month, a new cooperative will be incorporated. Vineyard Power will be the name of the co-op, and the slogan will be: “Our Island, our power.”

Then it becomes a matter of whether Island residents will go for it. The timetable, dictated to a large extent by the sudden enthusiasm of state and federal governments for renewable energy, is tight.

By year’s end, the idea’s proponent, the Vineyard Energy Project, wants to have assessed Islanders’ willingness to be involved, maybe through articles put before town meetings or some other means. Assuming a strong majority of Vineyarders back the concept, they then need people to start putting their money where their environmental sensibilities are.

By next spring, they need at least 900 people to do that, at $50 each, as further proof of Islanders’ support.

By 2012, they hope to recruit 3,600 members, financing the design and permitting stages of the development, and by 2016, all going to plan, the power could be flowing.

It’s an expensive vision, to be sure. Dave McGlinchy, executive director of the Vineyard Energy Project, told the Gazette this week the estimated cost of getting the project up and running would be in the vicinity of $100 million.

Then again, maybe the cost is not so great, when you consider the alternative.

Currently, he said, the Island spends about $103 million a year on its energy, of which only about $20 million stays here.

And that cost can only increase as the cost of fossil fuels does.

“Uncontrolled energy costs is one of the big drivers [of the plan],” he said. “We are at the mercy of unpredictable prices, generally trending upwards. That’s a scary place to be.

“Right now we are paying about 12 cents a kilowatt hour for electricity. We predict the co-op could provide power at about six to seven cents a kilowatt hour, about half of the cost now.”

But the cost savings would almost inevitably be even greater than that, he said, because the cost of wind-generated power is fixed, once the turbines are up and running.

Under the projection in the plan, factoring in reduced power use because of efficiency gains, about $39 million would stay on-Island, and only $42 million would go off into other pockets.

And the $100 million start-up cost is not as scary as it first seems. Only about $3 million of that would be directly shouldered by members according to energy project projections.

Low interest federal loans would provide 50 per cent of the funding. Renewable energy credits would provide 12 per cent, and private investors seeking tax credits another 35 per cent.

The plan would see the power delivered, as now, via the Nstar distribution network.

Now, said Mr. McGlinchy, your energy bill is split in two parts. There is the cost of supply and a cost for transmission, which is provided by NStar, who own the lines.

“For the energy part, you have a choice of power companies. The idea here is you would select the co-op as your supplier.

“Anyone on the Island who pays an electric bill could join. And only people on the Island could join.”

The cost of membership would work on a sliding scale, making for a strong incentive to get in on the ground floor. Those who join early would pay $50, but membership would get more expensive over the succeeding seven years, to a maximum of $975.

But even then, the savings look attractive. The average Vineyard household now uses some 7,000 kilowatt hours of electricity each year; the projection is that expense would drop about $500 a year.

Mr. McGlinchy said the plan was based on what Islanders themselves said they wanted, as reflected in the Martha’s Vineyard Commission’s Island Plan.

“We’ve taken the goals of the Island Plan, we’ve come up with a solution we think allows us to reach those goals, but we’re not going to go ahead unless there’s strong community support. This has to be a unifying effort, not a divisive one,” he said, adding:

“We’ve done a lot of research on the legal, financial, technical feasibility. There’s still some fleshing out to do — an exact site, for example.”

It would have to be a consultative process, but the likelihood is that the turbines would be located in federal waters, south of the Island.

In contrast to other wind farm proposals, like Cape Wind and the state’s recently-announced proposal to open up two areas in the ocean southwest of the Vineyard for up to 166 large turbines, the Vineyard Power proposal would seek to generate only as much power as Martha’s Vineyard needs.

Its 17 turbines would generate some 43 megawatts of electricity, enough to cover the winter needs of the Island, but not those of the high season.

“We don’t want to be a player in the energy markets,” Mr. McGlinchy said. “If we had a ton of excess capacity, we would be at the mercy of the vagaries of the markets.”

He wanted to stress two things. First, that the cooperative, once launched, would be an entity entirely separate from the Vineyard Energy Project.

And second, that it would be wholly run by and for the benefit of Islanders.

“ We think this needs to come from the community instead of being imposed on the community.”

“We believe that a locally-owned, locally-run cooperative is the best way to secure our energy future, to make it reliable, stable and affordable,” Mr. McGlinchy said.

“It’s up to the Island now as to whether they agree.”