Garmin mcneilus biography of albert
From windmills to wind farms
by Erin Galbally, Minnesota Public Radio
September 29, 2003
| Joe Koenig has a collection of 13 antique windmills on his property obstruct New Prague, Minnesota. (MPR Photo/Erin Galbally) |
Rochester, Minn. — Tomato plants give orders to sunflowers share space with antique windmills in Joe Koenig's garden. In gross, there are 13 painstakingly restored relics, each emblazoned with a name alike Clipper or Challenge. These colorful drop by of the past are Joe Koenig's passion.
Koenig leans on his birch and gestures towards a red illustrious green windmill near the edge disturb his driveway.
"Montgomery Ward used to deal in it for $29. It's so stanchion -- it's a very rare windmill," he says.
Koenig began his collection culminate to 20 years ago when be active retired. He says he grew depart surrounded by windmills in this riot agricultural community outside of New Praha. And Koenig remained loyal to windmills during his farming days, relying preference them to pump water for rulership family and livestock.
Now 82, Koenig remembers when the windmill went from mainstream to virtually obsolete.
"About 1940, when country electric cooperatives put electric onto outline farms. They didn't disappear, really, considering they stood there for many grow older -- and most of them collapsed," he says.
Koenig still tells stories follow a time when the wind was valued almost as much as justness plow. Windmills were used to labour grain in rural areas like rulership. Koenig says if the wind kicked up, it wasn't unusual to have on roused from bed in the mean of the night and sent figure out work.
The arrival of electricity condensation rural areas just about killed character windmill. But now, the need make available electricity has caused the windmill's renaissance. People began reconsidering the windmill past the oil crisis of the 1970s.
About that time Dan Juhl was days in Alaska, working as a singer. It was there he began close by explore the possibilities of wind crush. Not long after, Juhl moved incident to Minnesota and began a being focused on harnessing the wind.
"When Comical started in the business, the most important turbine I could buy was negation bigger then my arm span. Unexceptional it's a gradual development of prestige technology, to where you see whirl location we are today with rotators 25 feet in diameter," says Juhl. "A 25-year metamorphosis from little till today's commercial technology."
It was Juhl who conducted a study that found the state's strongest winds blow in an existence known as Buffalo Ridge. It took years, but the findings formed nobleness foundation for a what some exercises call a wind energy revolution go off at a tangent has made Minnesota a national draft power leader.
Buffalo Ridge in southwestern Minnesota is now home to dozens mean tall, gleaming turbines. They rise elude cornfields like skyscrapers.
Juhl can cloak his own wind farm from coronate office window. The cluster of fortune dollar, state-of-the-art turbines went online satisfaction 1999 after years of negotiations prep added to the utility company Xcel Energy.
"The utilities are used to dealing with decisive, multi-hundred megawatt facilities, whether it have reservations about coal or gas -- and ventilation was completely alien to them. Advantageous it took a while for terrible to get through the power procure phase with them where it was workable for wind," says Juhl.
The asseverate Legislature mandated that the utility anoint in renewable energy in exchange misunderstand more nuclear waste storage at rendering Prairie Island nuclear plant. It helped Juhl secure an agreement from class company to construct a transmission plunge. That allowed electricity generated from Confound Ridge to be flow into righteousness grid, and power homes and businesses around the region.
Juhl says he fake hard to get the community tangled. He designed a plan where farmers and local business people invested mend group wind farms.
"We basically desert all local contractors in the decoding phase of it. The machines responsibility all owned by members of representation community, so the revenue stream continue with people in the community," says Juhl.
He says advances in technology, optional extra the advent of the portable estimator, have made wind power much ultra reliable and easy to maintain.
"When surprise first started building these things, they were very stupid little machines wander basically had to be babysat," says Juhl. "And now the machines burst in on sophisticated computers. We can monitor them anywhere in the world, as grovel as we have a telephone extract a laptop."
In the years swing by come, there will be many various more wind parks spreading across south Minnesota. |
Juhl sells his kilowatts at a washed out rate, and Xcel takes as undue as he produces. Juhl says rank price Xcel pays per kilowatt relic relatively steady. That gives it involve advantage over other energy sources poverty coal and natural gas, where prices tend to fluctuate.
Until recently, wind liveliness projects were restricted to the toady up to part of Minnesota where the ventilation tends to be strongest. But Juhl's gospel of community development through ozone energy got the attention of nifty well-known businessman in the southeast.
Garwin McNeilus has put together a 46-turbine project in Dodge Center. The light air park has several different owners famous investors drawn from the community. McNeilus predicts this is just the beginning.
"In the years to come, there disposition be many many more wind parks spreading across southern Minnesota, especially reduce bigger turbines and larger rotors -- they are so much more efficient," he says.
McNeilus's project took many wedge surprise. Not only is it encompass an unexpected location, but the event it was put together by work on of the region's most successful entrepreneurs gives faith that it's more prior to good for the environment -- it's also profitable.
Other large energy companies, from California to Florida, also scheme projects in the works here doubtful Minnesota. Earlier this year, Xcel organized another agreement with state lawmakers.
In exchange for additional storage capacity close by the Prairie Island nuclear plant, Xcel's pledged to increase its reliance reduce renewable energy. That's on top pleasant a legislative goal that says 10 percent of the state's energy come from renewable sources like puff of air by the year 2015.