Dear City Cousin, I know youre a big fan of those windmills that you see from the interstate

highway. I mean the really big ones, not the ones that do work to pump water. And since I know you dont have any such a thing in the city where you live, I thought Id write to tell you about what Ive been studying. Sometimes we dont appreciate all the hard work and sacrifice that goes into bringing a new patch of windmills into the unproductive mountains we call home. Theres trees to cut and rocks to be blasted and roads dozed not to mention lots of engineering to be done. The engineerings probably the most important part because our mountains dont seem to have a lot of wind to offer although the developers say the winds great. Placing those monster wind turbines so they dont steal each others wind is a complicated task on rough ground. Being lucky enough to have the luxury of experiencing several of those wind turbines located outside my window has given me a rare and special opportunity. I guess I never noticed how many directions the wind blows from in the course of a week. Youd think that it would be out of the west, but we get days at a time when it blows from the east. I guess its just one of those many things Ive never thought about. As often as not, the wind blows along the ridge line from the north or south and that brings a question to mind. How good did those turbine engineers plan their turbine spacing for those days when the first turbine blocks the second the second the third and etcetera, etcetera, etcetera - to quote Yul Brynner. Those engineers must be pretty good though, theyve got a way to make the windmills turn even when the air is perfectly still. And thats not all. I find it amazing how, even when theyre turned off, the windmills keep changing where they face. A ways back, I hired an airplane and a fella to fly it. We flew over our mountain and, from the air, it seems to me that it was Mother Nature that did the picking of where the turbines might be located rather than the engineers. I sure hope it wasnt, because Im aware of the huge cost of each of those giant structures. Some say its around three million just for the hardware, not to mention all the peripherals like excavating, wiring, transportation, concrete and of course legal fees to keep those NIMBYs, who get in the way trying to protect their health, safety and property values, at bay. That dont

come cheap. We sure wouldnt want the investors (thats us U.S. citizens) to not be getting their moneys worth. With that in my mind, I took it upon me to go across America and find out just what all the wind power fuss was about. I saw a lot and one of the first things I learned was a new appreciation for our Allegheny Mountains, at least those that dont have the windmills yet. When it comes to the USA, well, most of its flat. Flat seems to be the preferred location for wind farms. I took to calling those locations Wind fields like our coal fields or the Southwests, oil fields.

Those fields really bring home the point that the Allegheny Mountains dont have many places

suitable for putting up a wind turbine. We have wind plants that number in the dozens of turbines while other places have ones that number in the hundreds. I was at one in Texas a couple of months ago. Horse Hollow they called it. Largest wind farm in the world, the sign said. Went on, six or eight turbines deep, for forty miles or so as I remember. They were having a drought at the time which made me wonder if all that scrub, cactus covered ground had ever been as rich and productive as our cool, moist Allegheny hills. They had some of those noisy, hatch banging GE turbines there too. Just like the ones I saw in Iowa and North Dakota that make an appearance in that video, Test of Time, weve all seen at that Allegheny Treasures computer blog. I took a snapshot there of a wind mill sitting between a row of wind turbines to show a size comparison. I guess if Im going to sound like an intelligent person, Im going to have to stop calling the turbines windmills.

The hatch banging along with the blade noise twirling along at 150 miles per hour is among the many reasons folks I visited in places like Wisconsin are a little sensitive about their neighbors setting up industrial strength wind turbines as close as 1,000 feet from the foundations of their homes. Right out their front doors. Thats the rules out there.

I thought that their politicians were pretty callous until I remembered that we dont have any kind of turbine tower set back requirements. Heck, we dont have much regulation of any sort to protect plain folks here at home. I was surprised that at just about every wind installation there were several turbines not running. I was also impressed by the number of times I came across wind farms that were becalmed with only a handful of the turbines turning while scores of turbines around them were stationary. Come to find out that the ones turning were getting their power off the grid. In a lot of places, thats fossil fuel thats making it possible to run the wind turbines. In several of the places I visited, it was carbon free hydro power being used to power supposedly carbon free wind turbines instead of offsetting carbon someplace else in the electric supply chain. I used to think that if the turbines blades were turning, electricity was being generated, but thats not completely true. Wind turbines only work at their best when the breeze is at the right speed which is somewhere between the mid thirties to the mid fifties. And you might remember that a fifty mile per hour breeze is mighty strong. Somebody had to explain the math to me, but it works out that if you cut the wind speed in half, the electricity generated is cut to one-eighth. Cut that in half and were down to a thirty-second. Thats getting down to amounts of electricity that are nothing more than a nuisance for power distributors to deal with. Think about all those still mornings and evenings in the mountains.

So, I asked myself, How is it that I see those turbines turning at times where theres not a hint of a breeze? I looked into that a little, and not being one of those engineer fellas, I was surprised to find out that each wind turbine is controlled by its own little computer brain as well as someone sitting at a bank of monitors hundreds of miles away. Way up on the tippy top of the nacelle (thats the name they have for the box at the top of the tower that holds the machinery that turns air into electricity), theres an anemometer and a sort of weathervane thing that tells the turbine brain if the wind is blowing and which way. Some of those little computer brains have been programmed to never give up. You see, its hard for the wind to get those three, hundred foot plus long blades covering about two acres of sky to turn the gears in the one hundred forty ton gearbox in the nacelle. If the computer brain thinks theres a chance, its programmed to draw electricity off of the grid to start the blades turning. I watched this happen several times on my trip. Like the Little Engine That Could in that picture book, these duty bound turbines cranked and cranked for hours but were, sadly, unable to make the wind blow. I had to feel a little sorry for them. You can tell when this is happening by looking at a wind farm and paying attention to where they are facing. If several of the turbines turn slowly in various directions defying the laws of nature, then its not the wind thats turning them. This doesnt show up too well in a still picture so youll just have to take my word on it. Say, maybe thats how they make the turbines back at home turn. I also learned that it ruins a wind turbine to sit still for too long. Tons and tons of weight sitting on bearings is kind of like what we used to do to a penny when we saw a train coming down the tracks.

I guess that must use up a lot of electricity when the wind doesnt blow for days on end just to keep the things from seizing up. Since my trip, Ive noticed that the turbines outside my window at home are turned off a lot of the time, but the nacelles do continue to track the wind by pointing in different directions throughout the day using electricity from the grid while producing none. Unlike back home, some folks here are downright happy about having the wind farms around. If you ride around some youll find lots of signs saying Welcome to Podunkville, windmill capital of Podunk County. In the interest of full disclosure, I made those names up to protect the clueless, but when your towns other claim to fame is their rattlesnakes, maybe we should cut them some slack.

In some places the wind developers have built little shrines to wind power in the corn fields or in what might be called the middle of nowhere. In a lot of these places it could be five miles to the nearest neighbor and theres several miles between the neighbors and the wind turbines. We found some really noisy turbines here with lose hatch covers banging on every revolution. We found the same problem in GE turbines in Iowa, North Dakota and Texas, and thats only the turbines that could be seen from the road.

I suspect that if the noise doesnt have an effect on electricity production, theres no reason to fix it. Or do like they do in a lot of places, if the part creates a problem, just throw it away. I reckon some of the pro-wind farm folks here find its a good deal to get government subsidies for farming the corn that gets government subsidies for being turned into ethanol, while taking payments from the wind developers which come from the renewable energy subsidies. And boy do they have every variety of ethanol you could think of out there. It was all I could do to figure out how to fill up my tank. I took a picture at the pump because I knew you wouldnt believe it. I got to witness some mighty strange things on my trip. In Spanish Fork, Utah they say they like to surround themselves with technology. If there were a cake for defying the laws of logic, the Edison Mission wind farm here would surely take it. At the time it was being proposed by the wind developers, they bragged that Spanish Fork had the best wind potential in Utah. Actually I cant remember a wind proposal anyplace where the developers didnt say that a place had great wind potential. At any rate, Spanish Fork was the best. In 2007 they put up nine Suzlon turbines from India. Of course there was hardly any wind the two days I was there which didnt exactly meet Edison Missions wind claims, but maybe

it is different here the other three-hundred-sixty-three days of the year. I have my doubts about that though. Spanish Fork is on the western side of the Wasatch Mountains sitting on a large plane stretching to the west. The turbines are located in a hollow at the base of a mountain pass. Their nacelles stick up slightly above the neighboring housing developments to their west and the wind turbines sit hundreds of feet below the mountains to their south. I was left scratching my head at what Edison Mission might have been thinking. The other wind power facility, presumably without the best wind in Utah, is still growing and has over a hundred turbines about a half days ride away. Its located on flat ground. Flat ground. Im sensing a pattern here. On the way home, I passed by several brand new installations in Minnesota, Iowa and Indiana on more flat ground. Like the ones Id seen in Wisconsin and elsewhere, these were uncomfortably close to private residences among the farm fields. All the elements were in place. At each turbine site, there were three tower sections, three blades and nacelles set out along a neat grid of gravel lanes. All that was left was for the cranes to arrive and assemble the parts. It wasnt too windy that day, but Ill bet there are times when they get a tornado or two to make up for it. I couldnt help but wonder at how much cheaper and easier it was for these wind developers, or the wind facilities Id seen in more than a dozen Western and Midwestern states, to put up a wind farm than back home where they had to blast, gouge and tear our mountains apart to attempt the impossible.

I wondered too at what kind of people would think that short term work for a handful of local folks ultimately leading to six or seven permanent jobs was worth the damage to the local economy and real estate values that would last until the project was taken down.

As I look at the stationary turbine outside my window, I sure hope that all the talk about how wind generated electricity doesnt amount to a hill of beans is wrong because Im going to be looking at these turbines for a long time. And even though the government wind study maps say otherwise, Ive been assured that we have the best wind around. Give the kids a hug from me.

Your Country Cousin

The preceding letter is written in the voice of a fictitious character who represents me and many of my mountain neighbors. It is based on an actual voyage of discovery that totaled three months riding the highways and back roads of the US and Canada seeking out wind farms in twenty states on several trips from August 2010 through April 2011. The purpose of these road trips was to look and listen. When it comes to the concept of electricity fueled by the wind one size does not fit all and everything depends on local point of view. The true story lies in the fact that wind power has nothing to do with saving the planet nor does it have anything to do with NIMBYs protecting their back yards. The reality of whether wind power is good or evil depends on where it is located, and how it impacts people. It has nothing to do with conservatives or liberals. Another piece of the puzzle is how wind power is funded, by whom, and what are its long term costs? We might want to add the question: Does it really achieve its goals? Letter from Your Country Cousin is based on the old childrens story of The City Mouse And The Country Mouse. In this case the city cousins rarely see whats happening in the country, yet they have a large, concentrated population which carries great decision making, political power. This is the case with wind power where well meaning city folks who have never experienced the reality of wind powered electrical generation, might overestimate their grasp of the facts and underestimate the knowledge and experience of their country cousins. At its least, this piece presents some interesting pictures to explore. At its best, it prompts the reader to ask some questions and to question some beliefs. Perhaps the first question should be: How did you form your understanding and beliefs regarding wind power? Cousin John Terry