!: Better Strap Your Hat On, Cowboy - We're Gonna Be Using Some Serious Wind!

Folks, I'm a real tree hugger. I worked as a civilian contractor at the US Department of Energy Headquarters in Washington, DC for five years. My group worked in the Renewable Energy sector, a unit in the Building Technology Section called Office of State and Community Programs. We dealt with all kinds of things applicable to local energy usage and conservation. I am really into great things energy-wise. Which leads to why I why wrote this article.

There has been a huge project in Renewable Energy for a wind farm in West Texas. Well, after almost two years in construction, the newest and probably the largest wind farm in the world is open for business, and accepting wind. One hundred thousand acres of West Texas cotton fields have become the home to 627 windmills. We have all seen pictures of these electricity-producing windmills. They're huge white things with three blades that look like a propeller.

Think about that for a minute. They built these windmills in cotton fields. Not only has this wind farm been a boon to the local economy during construction, but they haven't taken away the cotton fields that are the life blood of their daily existence. In true Renewable Energy fashion with minimum environmental impact, the West Texas farmers will still work their land. The land use was leased strictly for the purpose of building the windmills, but the rights to continue farming were maintained by the landowners.

Here's what we get from this: 627 windmills, 400 feet tall, spaced 900 feet apart, and in typical Texas size, they span across 4 counties. They produce over 781 Megawatts of electricity, enough to power almost a quarter of a million homes. That would be roughly the size the entire town of Lincoln, Nebraska or Fort Wayne, Indiana.

Can you picture this? One wind farm in Texas is capable of supplying all the energy needs of the State Capitol of Nebraska, without disturbing the environment or the local ecomony. One. How many more wind farms could we build? We have plenty of wind scattered here and there around the country. Wouldn't it be great to build more wind farms and get the electricity produced for FREE after the cost of construction is recovered?

Free? As in, produced at no cost because we already have the wind? As in, no coal or hydrocarbons to burn? As in, no dams to build? Could we do that kind of free?

This is the same kind of free that we talk about when we talk geothermal energy or solar power. Once the production equipment is in place, the units run themselves. We don't have to pay for the juice, only the equipment and installation. But that cost is the hard part.

We could easily build enough Renewable Energy production equipment just like this windfarm to run our households, our streetlights and appliances. Most of us could have solar panels on our roof. We could have efficient insulation in our homes. We could maintain an indoor temperature in our houses of 68 degrees for less than per month, except for the cost of the equipment and installation.

For example, you can build your own solar panel, a Do-It-Yourself project, for about 0. This single panel would give you enough electricity to run your computer for about five days a week. Build an entire solar array, and you could probably run your entire house for nothing. Build a second array, and you might have enough electricity left over to sell back to the power company.

Going a little further, geothermal can keep your house at 68 degrees, year around, at no cost after the initial installation. Most people think of a water loop in geothermal, where a water pipe is buried underground at the depth where the ground remains 68 degrees summer and winter. That's about 8 feet deep in most areas, with some being a little more, and some a little less. Water is pumped through the pipe, which absorbs the ground temperature, and is sent back into the house to the heat pump. The heat pump then starts to heat from a 68 degree surface instead of freezing or worse, so it doesn't work as hard, using less electricity. That's the common way to do it, and it's okay but there is a better way.

You go to the same depth, but instead of burying a water pipe you bury a duct, a 10 or 12" diameter duct. Instead of a water pump, you put an air intake on one end and bring the other end into your house. The air comes into the duct at the outside temperature and absorbs the same ground temperature as with the water as it passes through the tube. By the time it enters your home, the air is 68 degrees, summer and winter.

These have been proven in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where the winters get really cold, and Las Vegas, Nevada, where the summers get really hot. One tract I toured in Las Vegas guaranteed the electric bill would not go over /mo for the first two years you owned the home. The reason we don't have this geothermal everywhere goes to the cost of the installation, about ,000 for the average home.

The main thing is, however, that these forms of Renewable Energy are available. When I see a project like the Texas wind farm go online I start to think about all we can do, each of us, to conserve energy for our future, and what we can do to make more available for our use today.