Will wind power ever make up 100 percent of our electrical needs? Not by a long shot. The wind isn't reliable enough and you can't just put up a 400 foot tall wind turbine anywhere. The location must be, well, windy. But wind will definitely be a part of our future. The goal of the Wisconsin Renewable Portfolio Standard = 10 percent of Wisconsin's power must come from renewable sources by 2015.

HISTORY OF WIND POWER

Go way back - they were grinding grain in Persia in 200 B.C. with wind power. By the 14th century the Dutch, my ancestors, used windmills to pump water and grind grain. The first windmill for electricity production was built in Cleveland, Ohio by Charles Brush in 1888. Hundreds of thousands of windmills were pumping water in the U.S. by WWI and by the 1930's it was common for a farm to have an electricity producing windmill. In the early 1970's the commercial wind turbine market began to evolve, mostly in California - 17,000 were installed in a 10 year period. They spread to Colorado and experienced more than a few growing pains including technological, financial and governmental. Turbines were of Danish, Dutch, German, Japanese, English, Irish and U.S. origin. Turbine use grew in Europe and Asia as well.

According to Wind Energy News, Wisconsin is 23rd in the nation in total megawatts of wind power with 53 megawatts. Minnesota is third and Iowa is fourth with more than 1,200 megawatts each.

WIND TURBINES ON THE HORIZON

I took a detour and decided to ask a few residents who lived near the "wind mills" what they thought of them. I found out that they are controversial, and no one I talked to wanted their names printed.

One land owner had 10 turbines on his property, just part of an 80+ turbine wind farm east of Lake Winnebago. His property is surrounded, 360 degrees, by windmills - from a nearby hill you can count 85 of them. On this beautiful sunny day, almost all of them are spinning.

He works almost 2,000 acres and the 10 new wind turbines on his property take up about an acre each. The land is leased, on a 30 year contract, for $4,000 per year with a small increase built in for inflation.

"We're one of the first ones to have windmill projects around here", he explained. "As you know, fuel prices, fertilizer prices, feed prices have escalated in the last 18 months. When we made the contract on these windmills $4,000 a year sounded great - when corn was $2 a bushel. Nobody had the vision to see that it would go to $7 a bushel. So that's what makes a lot of people unhappy right now."

Not everyone near a wind farm benefits directly. Some residents have turbines all around them, seemingly looking down on them all day long, yet not getting paid for their presence. There are pros and cons to wind power, and not everybody likes the idea of wind turbines.

On a corner near Civic Park, Wisconsin there is a sign that says "Good Neighbors Don't Host 400 Foot Wind Turbines". I just had to stop and ask. The owner of the land was watering his flowers and hesitant about talking. He was opposed to the idea of wind turbines on his 60 acre parcel of land and when neighbors asked if they could put the sign up, he agreed.

"When they came to visit me I didn't want it. I'm sure they were going to set it in the middle of the 60 acres. I bet you I'd lose 20 acres out of that, with the turbine and for the road getting in and out of it.

I knocked on the door of a house with a view of six turbines. The woman who answered said, "I'm not thrilled about having them there, but I know that we do have to do something about energy, so I accept them. But if I find out that they don't work I'll be very upset."

DO THEY WORK?

Apparently so if there is a town powered by wind. But what about the nation as a whole, or the world for that matter? Time for some research. If you Google "wind turbines" you'll get more than five and a half million results. The information is overwhelming, and some of it is 10 years old.

A few things that I found convinced me that wind energy is not a flash in the pan:

As of 2007, there are 32,500 Vestas wind turbines (just one brand) in 60 countries world wide, many in Wisconsin.

WE Energies owns the largest wind farm in Wisconsin in the town of Calumet. It is 10,600 acres.

In 2007, Alliant invested $300 million in 88 turbines that will produce enough electricity for 36,000 homes (328 million kilowatt hours annually).

PROS OF WIND POWER

• Free raw energy or fuel (wind)
• No water pollution
• No air pollution - Over 20 years the new Cedar Ridge wind farm is expected to offset as much as 4.5 million tons of carbon dioxide (roughly the equivalent of taking 155,000 cars off the road each year, 3,500 tons of nitrogen oxides, 6,000 tons of sulfur dioxides and 50 pounds of mercury).
• No waste to dispose of, a problem with coal, and especially with nuclear power.
• The city and county where turbines are located receive Shared Revenue payments.
• Unlike many countries, the U.S. has vast expanses of property where we can harness the wind.

CONS OF WIND POWER

• Visual pollution - Many people don't like seeing them on the landscape
• Noise - Some nearby residents complain of whooshing sound but one source claimed they are limited to 50 decibels - about the volume of a human conversation. Today, most turbines are kept 1,000 feet from the nearest residence and modern turbines are much quieter than older models.
• Flicker - the effect of the shadows of the blades
• Cost effectiveness - Some critics think they will never pay for themselves.
• Affects on bird and bat populations in some areas
• Land use - Each turbine takes a half to one acre of land, including the access road.
• Wind fluctuations - Since the goal of most wind farms is to produce only a small percentage of the overall, and fossil fuel still supplies most energy, fluctuations in the grid don't affect overall supply.
• Wind availability - A small fraction of the land in the U.S. has the wind (16 mph) necessary for efficient production.  

WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD FOR WIND ENERGY?

The first building to incorporate wind turbines was just completed. Bahrain World Trade Center, a twin skyscraper complex. Will many sky scrapers and tall buildings incorporate their own wind energy in the futures?

There are wind turbines on Lake Erie with discussions about building them on Lake Michigan and Lake Superior.

Plans are being explored for floating wind turbines for oceans of the world, to power oil and gas platforms.

Home energy wind turbines are here already and growing more efficient as technology advances.

Thousands of pages of information about wind turbines and wind energy are available on the internet and through business and government organizations. While we don't aspire to providing a complete story on these four pages, we did want to plant a seed of thought, and of hope, that we are making strides in the right direction with renewable energy.