CCCC is all OVER the Kansas news media lately, along with Meridian Way Wind Farm (developed by Horizon Wind). Probably because it’s a success story.
From what I hear, the story does not overstress the physical demands of what it takes to work on wind turbines – especially during hot weather.
From the TCJournal, by Rick Dean:
Calling in the clouds:
At Cloud County Community College, technicians are trained for the physically, mentally challenging jobs in wind energyCONCORDIA — People familiar with the job for which Brian Tepesch is now training warned him to expect sensations of seasickness in his new profession.
Which initially struck Tepesch as odd, considering he would be working on the Midwest plains.
It makes perfect sense, however, when you learn that Tepesch hopes to be working 20 stories above the prairie on a steel tower-mounted structure the size of a small bus designed to move and sway in some of the most consistent everyday wind America has to offer.
Dramamine, for the record, isn’t an preventative option for the motion sickness common among new workers in this field.
“You don’t want to feel groggy,” Tepesch said, “when you’re working around 10,000 volts.”
When his training at Cloud County Community College is complete, you see, Tepesch hopes to climb some 260 feet, three to four times a day, into the mechanical workings of the electricity-producing wind-powered turbines he sees as a critical component of America’s energy future.
It’s a physically and mentally demanding job — one that combines the physical prowess of a rock climber with the mental acuity of both a mechanical and electrical engineer — that can’t be filled fast enough, a true rarity in today’s tight job market.
“I’m not a big fan of heights, and I know those things can sway pretty good in a 40 mph wind,” the former Ottawa University baseball player admitted. “But I’m not going to let fear prevent me from doing it.”
The prospect of finding in-demand, well-paying employment in a growing, green-energy industry brought Tepesch and others to Cloud County, an appropriately named place for the first school in the nation to train the technicians who will keep the wheels turning on our wind-energy future.
The challenge of working on gear boxes, transformers, generators, electronics, cooling systems, yaw gears, bearings, disc brakes and blade-pitch cylinders is daunting enough.
But doing all that highly technical work after an physically draining 260-foot climb into an enclosure that is hot as hell in the summer, teeth-chattering cold in the winter and designed to shift whenever the wind does requires a special kind of person.
“I know one guy who thought he was in pretty good shape, who talked about making the climb in record time,” said a grinning Tepesch, who has completed the climb that can average about five minutes. “He got maybe two-thirds of the way up and had to come down.”
Helping Tepesch ascend into his new profession is his vision of a bigger picture, a larger purpose waiting at the top of the climb.
“I see wind as the next big thing for our country’s energy independence,” said Tepesch, who ultimately hopes to move into a more grounded position in wind-energy development. “The job security, the pay scale — those are motivations, sure. But it also helps to work in something you believe in.
“Everyone talks about how the United States needs to create its own unique (energy generation) thing. Why can’t this become our thing? And why can’t we develop that industry right here in Kansas, right in the middle of the Wind Belt?”
Blowin’ in the wind
It’s quiet out here today on the cutting edge of America’s energy future.
The winds blowing through one of the highest points in Cloud County (elevation, 1,650 feet) are gentle today, maybe 5 mph at prairie level. It was decidedly different the previous evening when straight-line winds caused problems southeast of here around Manhattan.
This place must have been rockin’ and rollin’ then.
But that was last night. By the following noon, Bruce Graham — a former Hanover High School science teacher turned wind-energy instructor — is telling visitors not to expect too much as they tour the Meridian Way Wind Farm, one of seven electricity-producing wind farms now operating in Kansas.
Fewer than half the facility’s 67 giant windmill turbines are spinning, but that’s by choice, Graham said. Many of the units are awaiting maintenance on this light-wind day or aren’t needed to meet the demands of the energy grid. Many will be serviced, either today or in the near future, by Graham’s students from nearby Cloud County Community College.
There is plenty of energy-producing wind available even on this calm day, Graham assures his guests. Enough so that the 210-megawatt Meridian facility can provide power for some 45,000 homes — some customers of Westar Energy in Kansas, some in other states.
The light breeze felt at ground level, Graham points out, is considerably stronger at 410 feet, the peak point of the majestic Vestas V90, 3.0 megawatt turbines, the largest land-based turbines used in the United States. Its three 144-foot blades turn through a 90-meter diameter — 295 feet, about the length of a football field — anywhere from nine to 18 times a minute in normal Kansas winds, which in Cloud County average between 17-19 mph at around 300 feet.
But today is a lazy day on the wind farm. The most active turbine surveyed this day was doing around four revolutions per minute.
The optimum wind speed for electricity generation is 22 mph, but Kansas winds have been known to break the speed limit. When they exceed 56 mph, computer sensors effectively hit the brakes, pitching the blades and turning the entire structure into a protective park mode until the speed falls below 45 mph.
A YouTube video shows the destruction of a Denmark turbine whose spinning went uncontrolled.
Part of Graham’s mission is training the technicians who will keep these behemoth windmills from doing just that.
Cloud County began its wind program in 2006 with one evening class, one instructor and four students. This fall, though, the school expects 110 students with four instructors teaching classes from 8 a.m. though 9 p.m. in makeshift classrooms at a converted former Wal-Mart store.
Preparing students of all ages to work in a growing industry during a recession can be rewarding work. For though the wind industry plateaued somewhat when the general economy fell off, it didn’t see the dip of other businesses, Graham said.
“That actually was good for the industry, because it had been running so fast for so long that it couldn’t produce all the parts needed to repair all the turbines,” he said. “They needed a breather and got it.
“I look for it to kick off again and grow like it had been now that some infrastructure issue are settled.”
Kansas’ wind future
What role might Kansas play in that growth?
As much as it has the will to generate, say local experts in wind energy.
Kansas’ wind-energy potential has been rated as third-highest in the nation, but its output is only No. 9. That ranking baffles wind-energy proponents who see the state missing out on economic development and job creation.
Ruth Douglas Miller, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering and head of the Wind Applications Center at Kansas State University, believes the state can reap an economic bonanza — jobs created in manufacturing, taxes generated, land leased — by multiplying its current number of wind farms by a factor of eight.
“You look at the reports postulating on where (wind) jobs are going to be, it’s through the roof in our part of the world,” Miller said. “There are all the (construction) jobs involved in putting a farm up, and maintenance jobs will follow.
“We built five of our seven wind farms in the last two years, so we’re catching up. But it took Westar, KCP&L and other utilities deciding they wanted to use wind.”
Other jobs will be created in the construction of power transmission lines essential to moving electricity generated by Kansas wind to other states eager to buy it, Miller noted.
“We’ve got to get the big lines out here when the wind is good in Kansas, Nebraska, the Dakotas,” she said. “But those big lines are expensive, and presently there is no good regulatory way of spreading the cost for those lines out of its home state.”
America, Miller noted, has worked to fulfill national commitments in the past. Dwight Eisenhower was determined to build an interstate highway system. John Kennedy vowed to put a man on the moon. The Obama administration talks about creating 20 percent of America’s electrical production via wind by 2030 — a workable goal if the political and industrial will is there, said Dan Nagenhast, director of the Kansas Rural Center and coordinator for the “Wind in Schools” program.
“When you think about how we’ve powered our lives for the last 100 years, it’s been from digging stuff out of the ground,” Nagenhast said. “And whether you accept the concept of global warming or not, it’s pretty clear that eventually we’ll pull every bit of that carbon out of the ground and burn it up and put it in the air.
“Utility companies have a great opportunity here, but they have business models based on the existing systems,” Nagenhast said. “The inclination is to fight to keep that business model. They’re arguing for the use of buggy whips when they should be in prime position to lead us into the future.”
