Rock Port Missouri Goes Totally Wind-Powered

The Loess Hills Wind Farm, a 5 kilowatt four turbine installation in northwestern Missouri, opened the third week of April. It is expected to generate about 16 million kWh each year, 3 million more than the town of Rock Port (population: 1395) uses in the same period. Missouri Joint Municipal Utilities, who will also provide power when the wind is low, will purchase the excess.

The Wind Capital Group out of St. Louis, specializing in small-scale wind developments for communities in Missouri and the Midwest, constructed the Loess Hills Wind Farm. John Deere Wind Energy of Kansas City handled the financing.

Meanwhile, Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens has announced that his company, Mesa Power, is in the planning stages to construct a $10 billion wind farm, the world’s largest. The farm could generate 4,000 megawatts of electricity, enough power for about 1 million homes. That’s equivalent to the generating capacity of two commercial scale nuclear power plants. As opposed to Loess Hills’ four, this farm will require 2700 $2 million wind turbines. Next month Mesa Power will begin buying land across 200,000 acres of the Texan panhandle.

“Don’t get the idea that I’ve turned green,” Pickens told the Guardian, a British newspaper, in an April 14th interview in Dallas. “My business is making money, and I think this is going to make a lot of money.”

While wind power won’t provide electricity reliably in many areas of the US, the open plains of Texas and Missouri are ideal for it. Wind farms are a valid component in a localized and diverse, region-appropriate electricity production grid that could replace our centralized power industry as fossil fuels become more scarce and expensive.

www.guardian.co.uk