Electricity from The Wind

By noval2

All over the American West, billboards touting such curiosities as 60-ft. cacti and petrified armadillos lure travelers from the interstates to the tourist emporiums of dusty towns. Lacking any such magnet, Clayton, N. Mex. (pop. 3,000), a farming and ranching center nine miles from the Texas border, was long, in the words of Local Merchant Leon ("Buster") Zinck, "a forgotten city--even in Albuquerque." But no more. Now Clayton's Union County Fairgrounds boast a unique attraction: a 100-ft.-tall windmill, the first in the land to be built by the Government to supply electricity.

A joint project of the Department of Energy and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, the windmill --more correctly, wind turbine--has a body by Westinghouse and blades by Lockheed, and cost $1.25 million. Parked by its side is a van full of monitoring equipment and computers that start the rotor turning when the wind hits 12 m.p.h. and shut it off, to prevent it from wearing out, at 40 m.p.h. Since winds averaging nearly 15 m.p.h. blow through Clayton almost every day, the turbine more often than not will be generating 200 kw. of electricity--enough to power 60 homes --or some 15% of the town's needs.

"We're not trying to replace everything in the world," says George Tennyson, speaking for DOE. "We just want to be a part of the stable of available power." To that end, the agency will soon build similar pilot projects on Culebra Island, Puerto Rico, and Block Island, R.I., and plans a 2,000-kw. model for Boone. N.C. The Federal Government wind-energy budget has ballooned to $38 million (a few privately owned turbines already serve remote mountain and island locations). Government experts estimate optimistically that wind power will furnish at least 3% of the nation's electricity by the year 2000.

Citizens of Clayton are proud. "They feel as though they are contributing something to the nation," says Clyde Sowers, editor and publisher of the Union County Leader. The Leader, in fact, broke new ground in anthropomorphic journalism by featuring the windmill in a regular column titled "Know Your Neighbor."

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