Editorial

Harnessing the wind

Wednesday, April 30, 2008

Rock Port, Mo., in far northwest Missouri declared last week that the town of 1,300 has become the first U.S. city to get all of its electricity from wind power.

The St. Louis-based Wind Capital Group, according to an article by the Associated Press, and John Deere Wind Energy built a wind farm of towering turbines on bluffs not far from the Missouri River west of Rock Port. The wind farm generates five megawatts each day, almost twice as much electricity as the town needs.

This is an exciting development. Although there are considerable up-front costs -- the farm cost $90 million, wind comes cheap. And wind is abundant in northwest Missouri, where rolling farmland without hills or dense forests does little to impede the flow of the wind.

The leaders of Rock Port and of the businesses that developed the wind farm are to be congratulated for their cooperation and foresight.

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What a wonderful idea! I'm in favor of solar panels on all buildings;utilize what you already have.

-- Posted by redpen on Wed, Apr 30, 2008, at 9:30 AM
I know 90 million is a lot of money, but how long will it take for the windmills to pay for themselves? I would love to see more windmill farms in the future.

-- Posted by tammy1123 on Thu, May 1, 2008, at 10:19 AM
Wind power is groovy if you have a constant wind. For areas like S.E.MO. where we can go days at a time without even a slight breeze, not so much.

Wanna do something to help bring energy costs under control?? Strangle an Eco-Hippie and get them out of the way of letting oil companies drill for the oil the USA has under it's own soil and build more refineries to process it.

And let electric companies build more nuke plants. Uncle Sam's Yacht Club has been running nuclear powered electricity plants for 50+ years without any of the China Syndrome/two-headed babies problems the Eco-Hippies always screech and sue about, so why shouldn't we reap the benefit from all the Navy's experience with cheap electric power.

A power plant like the one aboard the U.S.S. RONALD REAGAN would power Cape for 20 years before needing to be refuled.

Besides, we paid for it.

-- Posted by FORGER on Sat, May 3, 2008, at 3:43 PM

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