USA - Pike County wind featured attraction at conference

Glenn Raines' grandfather used wind power in the 1920s to generate electricity to stockpile to provide electric lights. Raines' own interest in wind power dates to the early 1980s when he came to work at the Orr Research Farm located on a "windy hill" near Perry. He was taking notes Wednesday on today's new-generation wind energy systems for a natural resource and conservation class he teaches at John Wood Community College. Wind is one of the renewable resources Raines covers in his class. It was the focus of a Pittsfield conference that drew more than 50 people from as far away as New Berlin and Hoopeston to learn about community-scale wind energy projects.

"To me, it says the interest is definitely out there," said Jennifer Mowen, University of Illinois Extension unit leader in Pike County and interim coordinator of the Pike County Economic Development Corp. Mowen hopes that wind power companies capitalize on that interest to bring more development to the county already home to a 1.65-megawatt wind turbine installed last year by Illinois Rural Electric Cooperative. At least one company, Annapolis, Md.-based Synergics Wind Energy, already is.

Vice President Art Hagood said work has begun to install a wind monitoring tower on farmland along the El Dara blacktop. Carl Hoos, whose father owns the site, hopes to see turbines on the property. "We're looking to keep expanding in Pike County," Hagood said. The IREC hopes its turbine — which has been online nearly a year and is performing above expectations — will create "a springboard effect" in an area that could support 50-100 turbines as an economic development tool. IREC engineering manager Sean Middleton said the turbine's blades start turning with winds of only 3.5-4 miles per hour, and generates power once winds reach 7 miles per hour. At full power, the single turbine generates enough electricity for 500 homes, or about one-third of the co-op's rural Pike County customers.

Pike County, located between the two rivers, has a "wind tunnel" effect that could fuel turbines reaching more than 300 feet in the air, Roger Brown said. But finding financing to develop a community-scale project can be a challenge, said Diane Hamburger, who handles marketing and communications for the Illinois Finance Authority. "Large wind farms have access to capital that the smaller landowner, farmer, community-scale (projects) don't have," she said. The authority helps bridge the gap by offering loan rate reductions and loan guarantees. The authority sponsored the conference in partnership with Extension in Pike, Adams and Brown counties, Farm Bureau in Pike, Scott and Adams counties, IREC and PCEDC. Another conference took place last month in Bloomington, with a third slated for May 30 in the DeKalb area.