Talk about zapping two birds with one stone. As Harmon Wilts of rural Kerkhoven has it figured, putting up two electricity-generating windmills is not only good for the environment, but it should basically unhook him from the electric company’s billing department.
    “Kind of a slogan we have in our family is ‘just do the right thing.’ It really looks like and feels like putting up a wind turbine is the right thing to do,” said Wilts. “Are we going to get rich by doing it? No. Are we going to make a little bit? Maybe. But it’s more to do the right thing.”
    He’s putting up two Jacobs wind energy systems, each capable of generating 19.5 kilowatts of electricity. These wind turbines will stand 120 feet tall, as a pair of sentinels in the back yard of he and his wife Gina’s home.
    Wilts has been working on this project for a couple of years. With electric floor heat both in his shop and in his house, putting these turbines up it should supply both systems.
    The windmills won’t turn all the time. Sometimes they turn very fast and generate more than what a person can use, and sometimes they’re going to generate less on a still day. “But if you add up the whole year we’ll be in a spot where we won’t need any electricity as far as coal or anything like that.” And that feels pretty good, Wilts said. “Right now we’re moving into this huge energy crunch where we’re going to need more energy into the future than we can produce. If each individual does their part, think of what could happen.”
    It’s important to pick the right spot in putting up a windmill, he said and there are several things you need to consider, the first of which is deciding if you have enough wind to make it feasible. “In our part of the state wind is not a problem. We’re very lucky we have a lot of wind and so from that standpoint we can be very efficient with wind.”
    Wilts said wind speed and height are two considerations in planning a turbine. A 30 foot tower will not catch much wind, an consequently not generate a lot of electricity.  A lot of turbines are in the 80 to 90 foot range, but Wilts’ is a 120 footer. “There are some bigger ones and taller ones but then you get into a lot more money. Right now for individuals the most economical are the smaller wind turbines.”
    There are basically three types of wind turbines, Wilts explained. There are small wind turbines that can be put on the roof of a building to help generate some electricity; there are medium sized turbines like  he’s putting up; and there are the huge commercial turbines which dot Buffalo Ridge. Some of those mega-turbines may appear in Swift County as there is currently a project in the development stage.
   Wilts is locating his towers on the highest elevation on his farm.  “The higher you are, the more the wind blows.” Ideally the wind comes up a hill to get the most leverage, and keeping away from wind obstructions is also a key. “Siting is kind of a big deal,” said Wilts.
    A turbine also should be close to an electrical line because running a line in the ground is expensive.
    In this area’s geography, Wilts said, nearly every farm could find a site to put up these types of wind turbines.
   Besides meeting his electrical needs, the other reason Wilts is installing two turbines is to do some research on different blades an other variations. He noted that technology has improved in the last ten years to where now more electricity can be generated at lower wind speeds. “That’s part of the research.”

It isn’t all that simple

Having a wind generator isn’t as simple as just using the raw energy collected. It has to be converted into a useable form at a steady current. To do that a line runs from the generator to an inverter in a small building that sits between the two turbines. A regulator then takes the electricity and evens it out so there aren’t big “globs” of electricity coming in. Without this process, Wilts said, the lights would constantly be going on and off.
   There is also a breaker box and a meter in the house, and from that meter the electricity can go two places. “If I had it right here I would begin to use electricity in the house. But mine will directly feed into the electrical line and go the electrical company. I’ll be selling the current back.” 
    Most of the electricity will go back on the grid, so he’ll be both buying power from the electricity company and selling it to them. “But at the end of the day those two windmills will make it a net equal for me.” Over a 12 month period he won’t consume more than he produces.
  The three blades on his turbines measure 12 meters and put out a maximum of 20 kilowatts when the wind is blowing 25 miles an hour. “These turbines have a little shorter blades but they run faster. What’s really nice and unique about this is they’re nearly maintenance free.” Once a year Wilts has to climb up the tower to check the springs and fill a large grease reservoir. 
    If the wind is blowing too fast it can ruin the generators, so a mechanism will slow the turbines down. “If you had 50 or 75 mile an hour wind these blades will turn and it will only rotate up to 175 rotations. Plus there’s a tail on here so it will turn automatically when the wind changes.” 
     Wilts took his lead from two area wind generation ‘pioneers’. Tom Clemens has two of them on his rural DeGraff farm, and Grant Krieger of rural Kerkhoven installed one several years ago.  “We’ve been able to watch and study,” said Wilts. “It looked to me like this was the most maintenance free, the most efficient and probably the best one to pick at the moment.”
    The windmills are relatively expensive, but Wilts is doing a few different things to help with that. “To go out and write a check and buy the windmill and rely solely on electricity use is not real feasible.” He said it will take between 13 and 20 years to get a payback on this investment, so he wrote a USDA grant.  “Writing the grant really helped me because I had to study all these things. This really helped prepare me.”  He was rewarded fro the extra effort with a grant that will pay 25 percent of the cost of the project.
     There are some other avenues as well, he said, such as tax depreciation and a two cent per kilowatt tax credit as a little bit of incentive. Other things he’s working with at this point is linking up with a couple of colleges which will be able to go on a website and actually use it as part of their classroom teaching. 
     “They’re happy to pay you a fee for a year to be able to utilize all your information.”  Wilts said there are also cell phone companies and others that want to put small antennas up on the towers. “So if you get everything you’re looking at probably about a six year payback. I don’t have everything locked down yet, so between a 6 and 10 year payback is what I’ll be looking at.”
    Wilts said they’ve also had some discussions with KMS on this. “FFA instructor Krista Williams is going to be offering a biotech class, so they could use some information as well.”
    This project is not going to be a big money maker, at least not at today’s prices. But if and when electric rates climb it will become more an more valuable. “Electric companies are telling you that electricity is going to be the next big increase in price. If that’s the case these things will pay back a lot quicker and more people would be doing it at that point.”  
    Roughly the total cost for the two turbines will be about $130,000. Over the last couple of years the price for this sort of project has gone up a lot.  “It’s like everything. You’ve got to figure out how to make this thing work. If you could make a millions there’d be a whole bunch of them up.”
    Construction on the project began about a month ago with digging of footings, and Wilts estimates the turbines to be up an turning toward the end of this month or shortly thereafter.
   One issue he has had to deal with is the high demand for turbines. Plants are swamped and there’s more demand than they can put out.
    One thing Wilts said he’s disappointed with is his power company. When he told them he was putting up two wind turbines they sent him a form entitled “Request for single phase electrical service for green power.” "That means I get to pay full price for everything.” What he’s really disappointed in is a monthly access charge. Wilts said they usually pay $25.50 per meter for the house. “But if it’s green power it’s $38.50 a month.”
    That’s the company policy at this point, Wilts said, but he believes in time that will change and they will see the big picture. “My point to them is when they have to go buy this expensive electricity, if there were more wind turbines they wouldn’t have to buy nearly as much.”  At this time, however, the power company has not been willing to deviate from its policy.
    Should that one hurdle get in the way of “going green?” No, said Wilts.

One piece of the energy puzzle

Looking at the whole picture of energy, Wilts said wind is just one part of the solution. There is no one thing we can put our fingers on and say ‘this will solve all of our energy crisis.’ “ He believes that by 2030 the world will need more energy to the equivalent of energizing two China’s. And that’s just 22 years down the road. “We are going to have to look at all these sources because at the rate we’re going it may not be a question of how much energy its going to cost us, it might be more of will we have enough to get done what we need to get done.”
    Wilts is also involved with three ethanol plants .. another piece of the puzzle. Conservation is part of the process, and he’s looking into adding a ground source heat pump system for their home. “All it takes is a little electricity to run that motor. We have to look at all those different facets. That’s kind of the big picture. So this is just a step, it’s part of it.”
    “Wind really is one of the most efficient sources of generating electricity.” Folks on the Buffalo Ridge put together a cooperative to utilize the resource, and that could possibly happen right here as well. Wilts is with the Swift Wind LLC and to date they’ve put up about 20 windmills in the Danvers area.
   It takes a cooperative effort to go forward with the big turbines due to the cost of upwards of two million dollars apiece or more.  “You generate more electricity but that is such a long process.” With Swift Winds LLC, for instance, he said it was a year ago in April that they put in their application but it won’t be studied until sometime in 2009. “It’s a long drawn out affair and it’s very expensive.”
    These smaller turbines were ones he could take action on quickly. “It’s a way to start doing your part of the whole piece.”
    “I realize one person doing one thing isn’t going to solve everything but if everybody can start doing some of that it’s a big thing.”
    “Within the next year or two I will be in a spot where I won’t need to rely on fuel from OPEC anymore. If everybody could kind of do a little bit of that.....”