With construction of wind farms in the northwest, wind power becomes reality in Missouri. 

David Waltemath leases part of his acreage to a renter who harvests an invisible crop—the breeze that blows across Waltemath’s Gentry County, Mo., ridges.

Wind Capital Group is now putting finishing touches on four 2.1 megawatt wind turbines on Waltemath’s farm. Four more turbines sit on the Waltemath family farm, with another one on the farm of David’s brother. All together, Waltemath land is host to a third of the 27 wind-generating plants built at Missouri’s first utility-scale wind farm, Bluegrass Ridge, just north of King City.

“I signed a 25-year lease with Wind Capital Group,” said Waltemath, who adds that the lease is renewable and transferable. “They pay me about $3,000 per turbine per year, or some $12,000 for the four, and payments are made annually.

“Except for the changed landscape, which took some getting used to, having the wind plants on my land makes very little difference in the way we operate the farm,” he added. “Each turbine tower has a footprint of about 40-by-40 feet and there’s a 12-feet-wide access road. We can use the rest of the land as we wish.”

Power from three of the wind turbines now nearing completion in southern Gentry County will supply electricity to the city of Columbia, Mo. Associated Electric Cooperative, Inc. will buy juice generated by the other 24 machines and distribute it through its network of rural electric cooperatives that provides power to more than 800,000 member/customers in Missouri, Iowa and Oklahoma.

In all, the 27 Suzlon S-88 turbines have a capacity of about 56 megawatts. Each turbine generates 34,500 volts of electricity. Turbine output is fed into a switchyard where voltage is stepped up to 161,000 volts, or “high-line” voltage. NW Electric Power Cooperative at Cameron, Mo., transmits power from the wind farm to AECI’s network.

The Bluegrass Ridge wind farm is the brainchild of Tom Carnahan, St. Louis attorney and president of Wind Capital Group, the developer of the project.

“About 2 years ago, Tom came home from work one evening and said, ‘why doesn’t Missouri have a commercial-scale wind power installation?’” said his wife, Lisa Carnahan.

That “why-not” question was the beginning, although Carnahan admits to dreaming about a wind-power project for some time before.

Plans are dreams with road maps; Carnahan began researching the feasibility of an installation. At about that time, the Missouri Department of Natural Resources inventoried wind resources in different areas of the state. Carnahan went prospecting for a stiff breeze and settled on northwest Missouri as the region with the most potential. He lined up technical experts, equipment suppliers and talked with the Wind Energy Group of John Deere Credit about financing a project.

In January 2006, Carnahan announced the Bluegrass Ridge Wind Farm, which would cover about 10,000 acres owned by a dozen landowners in southern Gentry County. Construction started in mid-year and the first turbines began pumping kilowatts into the AECI grid before the end of 2006.

“From a landowner’s standpoint, Wind Capital Group has been easy to work with,” said Waltemath. “I had wheat growing at one site when they began construction there, and they agreed to hold up until after I had combined the crop. Now that construction is over with, Wind Capital Group is grading out their tracks and returning the land to pretty much the way it was.”

In July, 2006, Carnahan unveiled plans for a second wind energy farm, the Cow Branch Wind Energy Project, located between Tarkio and Rock Port, in Atchison County, Mo.

“The Cow Branch installation will have 24 turbines, each with 2.1 megawatt capacity,” said Carnahan. “We plan to begin construction early in 2007.”

And just last month, he announced a third wind-energy project, to be located near Conception, Mo., in Nodaway County.

When all three (Bluegrass Ridge, Cow Branch and Conception) wind energy projects are on stream, the wind machines will be producing a potential 150 megawatts or more—enough power for about 45,000 homes.

The wind generators qualify for a renewable energy federal tax credit of 1.9 cents per kilowatt-hour generated.

“But we are not asking for any abatement of local and county taxes,” said Carnahan. “We don’t want to have to depend on the government, although we want government to be a full and active partner. In fact, we need fair and uniform tax policy for all renewable energy development.”

“The Bluegrass Ridge installation will add about $500,000 per year to county revenues,” said Larry Wilson, Gentry County commissioner. “And it has added some economic activity during construction, primarily to rock and concrete suppliers.”

Tom Carnahan believes the development of wind energy should help spur longer-term economic activity. Noting that Wind Capital Group had to shop not only in the U.S. but overseas—Europe and India—for components to build the Missouri wind machines, he thinks there is potential for northwest Missouri in manufacturing wind-generating equipment.

“There’s a $1 billion potential in wind-energy development in Missouri,” he said. “I think rural Missouri can become a leader in supplying that industry.”

“Nationally, the United States produces 10 million megawatts of electricity from wind power,” said David Drescher, vice president, John Deere Wind Energy. “That’s less than 10 percent of the electrical energy for the United States, and there’s a lot of potential for much more energy to be produced by the wind. We’re transforming rural America again. These investments benefit the communities where our customers live. That’s why John Deere is involved in wind-energy development.”

Meanwhile, Neil Fox, University of Missouri atmospheric scientist, is still looking for Missouri’s windiest places. Fox is installing anemometers on microwave and transmission towers across the western half of the state, from northwest Missouri to as far south as Barton County.

“We’re recording wind speed and direction at 100 and 200 feet, and as close as we can to 500 feet above the ground surface,” said Fox. “We want to measure wind speed and direction for at least a year in each location, but the early data looks good at a lot of the locations.”

In southern Gentry County, any time the breeze blows at five miles per hour or harder, Missouri’s wind farms will be breathing kilowatts into 51 local rural electric cooperatives.

“That’s energy we don’t have to buy from some country with an unsavory leader who doesn’t like us,” said David Waltemath.