Lake Country Power Wind Tour

11/28/2006

Lake Country Power Wind Tour
By
Jennie K. Hanson
November 28, 2006

Have you seen them?  Have you wondered what they are?  What may you ask am I talking about?

Well, over the past few months there have been huge trucks traveling on Highways 210 and 73 that are over 100 to 150 feet long with 30 wheels on each of them escorted and by police cars with flashing lights!  These trucks are hauling the propeller blades for the wind turbines that are popping up in Minnesota, Iowa, and Canada.  These wind turbines are made in Germany, shipped into the Duluth Harbor, unloaded and reloaded onto huge semi trucks and then transported to their final destinations.  One of these destinations was the TriMont Area Wind Farm located in Jackson and Martin Counties in Southwest Minnesota.

In September, my husband Bob and I and a group of over 40 folks from our area went on the Lake County Power Company’s Wind Tour in South - Western Minnesota.  We started out by going to Elk River and toured the energy plant there.  The garbage from the 7 county surrounding area fuels this plant. Then we took the bus to Mankato where we stayed for the night.  The next day we went to TriMont, MN and toured the wind towers.  (In 1959, the communities of Triumph and Monterey formed the community of TriMont.)  There were over 600 people at this tour.  We were served a meal and then listened to several speakers about the wind towers.  The busses took us out to the farm fields where we were actually given the chance to go into the base of a wind tower.  There are 69 towers in the TriMont area and they cost over one million dollars each.  The towers are 328 feet high; the rotor diameter of each wind turbine is 231 feet, 10 % longer than the wingspan of a Boeing 747 - 400 Jumbo Jet.  They used more than 348 cubic yards of concrete to complete each of the plants’ wind turbine foundations.  These towers can supply electric energy to 29,000 area homes.  The farmers still own the land that the turbines are located on and still do their entire regular farming on these fields.  The fields looked great and were ready to have their corn crops harvested soon.  The farmers also earn a substantial amount of money for having the turbines on their fields.

Standing right under one of these giant wind towers is an awesome experience.  They really make a person or even the Greyhound Bus seem small in comparison.

This tour may be offered again next September, so watch for the notices in your electric bill and try to sign up.  It is well worth the trip and was fun getting to know some of our members in our area electric cooperatives.