A farm of 27 steel turbines is rising over the quiet landscape of northwest Missouri. For now, its impact is felt mostly as a boost to the economy of the nearby community of King City. But when the machines are complete, a portion of the power they create will be sent to Columbia, a step toward meeting the city’s goal of greater dependence on renewable resources.

KING CITY - Lloyd Darnell and Bob Deshler remember when this small northwest Missouri community was recognized the world around as a leader in harvesting bluegrass seed.

Each morning, the two men - both Gentry County natives - meet at the post office on Highway 169 to read the local paper and chat with other residents passing through to pick up the morning mail.

The spot where Darnell, an 84-year-old former postmaster, and Deshler, 87, often perch is within view of an aging water tower that half a century ago announced in large blue letters this farming community’s ties to the once-booming bluegrass seed industry. That industry, like many others in the United States, eventually dried up, and the farmers around here were left to try to turn a profit with soybeans and corn.

"It used to be that everybody had 40 acres and a mule," Darnell said.

Federal census figures indicate the number of farmers in the area has declined in recent years along with the population, but a renaissance of sorts is sprouting from the same fields around King City that once produced its lifeblood grass seed.

Across about 7,000 acres just north of the center of the town, large white poles are rising amid the corn and soybean fields. With the addition of blades half a football field long, they will become wind turbines - the first utility-scale wind farm in Missouri.

Corporate backers of the project dubbed Bluegrass Ridge call the wind farm an essential step toward energy independence. King City residents see it as a way to bring back some pride to the community. The new industry here, they said, is cutting-edge and will put the town back on the map economically.

Darnell recently said he has seen more people eating at a popular local restaurant after workers first showed up early this year to begin construction on the wind farm. The workers also shop at a small grocery store on Vermont Street, and that’s good for the local economy, he said.

"If it helps the community, then it’s great," Darnell said.

More than 210 miles from where 27 steel turbines will cast slowly rotating shadows over farmhouses and crops by the end of this year, city leaders in Columbia also eagerly await the wind farm’s completion.

Restaurateurs and business owners in King City are reaping the benefits from Bluegrass Ridge, but Mid-Missourians will also share the effects of the project.

In a ceremony Thursday at the Daniel Boone Building, Columbia leaders signed an agreement with Springfield-based Associated Electric Cooperative to buy power from the wind farm. It marked the first time a Missouri city will buy power produced from wind.

Columbia voters in 2004 overwhelmingly approved a law that requires the city to devote a portion of its power portfolio to renewable resources such as landfill gas, wind and solar energy. Since the vote, the city has purchased power produced by gas from a landfill in Illinois and is in the process of building its own landfill gas generator.

Under the agreement with the co-op, Columbia will purchase power over 20 years from three of the 2.1-megawatt turbines in King City - potentially enough to provide electricity to 2,300 homes.

"My belief is the community thinks wind power is an option," City Manager Bill Watkins said. "The numbers indicate we’re going to do more than just landfills."

Bluegrass Ridge is scheduled to go online early next year, and Columbia will start receiving power from the turbines shortly after the blades start turning. Exactly how much power the city will get remains unclear.

Because wind is unpredictable - it’s not breezy all the time, after all - the power output will vary. Developers of the King City project said the wind farm is designed to produce power for as many as 34,000 homes across the state, but the actual output could be much less.

Dan Dasho, director of the Water and Light Department, estimates Columbia will receive about 30 percent to 40 percent of the potential capacity from the city’s stake in the wind farm. However, he said, that isn’t the point.

Dasho and other city officials said Columbia’s purchase in a larger sense represents a first step in Missouri toward easing transmission of wind-generated power to municipal utilities.

"This is our beginning," Dasho said. "We wanted to get the wind power and see what’s involved in making it flow."

Columbia will pay more for the wind power than it typically would for electricity produced at coal-fired plants such as the city’s municipal power plant on Business Loop 70.

Coal-fired electricity costs about 4 cents per megawatt hour, and wind power costs about 6 cents per megawatt hour. The wind power agreement, however, is expected to be cost-effective because the rate will remain the same throughout the term of the contract.

The city expects to spend about $444,000 in the first year of the wind-power agreement.

It’s tempting to think of Tom Carnahan as Don Quixote, tilting at windmills, but that would be unfair.

Carnahan, the son of the late Gov. Mel Carnahan, is the guiding force behind Wind Capital Group, developer of the Bluegrass Ridge project and two others planned in nearby Atchison and Nodaway counties. He founded the company in 2004 after years of state government studies on the feasibility of harnessing wind power in Missouri.

After wind studies indicated the turbines could be successful in areas in the northwest portion of the state, Carnahan began talking with landowners about the possibility of building a wind farm. He also began talking to John Deere & Co., which agreed to fund the $70 million to $75 million project.

"A few years ago, we never could have done a wind farm in Missouri," Carnahan said. "This isn’t the same wind as you would see in western Kansas or California."

The use of wind power across the country still is under study, though hundreds of megawatts of wind-power capacity have been constructed in Midwest states such as Iowa, Minnesota and Nebraska. By next year, Missouri wind farms will provide about 100 megawatts of capacity. In total, turbines in the United States account for more than 10,400 megawatts of capacity.

According to the American Wind Energy Association and the Missouri Department of Natural Resources, it’s simply not windy enough in the Show-Me State to allow a large number of wind farms. They point to "wind maps" that show the wind blows at slower speeds in Missouri than in states such as California and Texas.

Transmission of the electricity created by the wind farms also creates a problem for the projects in Missouri. The wind often blows hardest in rural areas that typically don’t have a network of high-voltage transmission lines to get the energy from the wind farm to the cities that need it.

O.B. Clark, president of Associated Electric Cooperative, said turbines in King City will directly feed into an existing transmission line.

"It all came together in this Bluegrass Ridge wind project," Clark said.

Electricity from the wind farm is expected to make up about 1 percent of the 1,200-gigawatt hours needed to keep the lights on in Columbia.

The King City wind farm lies just north of town, and the beginnings of what will soon be wind turbines rise from the fields among dirt roads and farmhouses.

On site, workers assemble the 262-foot towers upon which turbines with three 140-foot blades will be placed. All of the turbines should be completed by next month, but No. 27 - one of Columbia’s - will be finished first.

The man in charge at Bluegrass Ridge is Ken Hensley, a longtime friend of Carnahan who admitted he knew nothing about wind power or wind farms before he took over as director of operations for the Gentry County project. The former owner of an auto dealership in Albany, Hensley can rattle off minute details about wind power and the turbines that lie unfinished on cleared land among rows of crops.

For instance, transmission lines that will bring the power to Columbia and other Missouri cities from the electric cooperative were built in the 1950s, Hensley said. And a tractor-trailer can carry two of the blades protected in large, metal crates.

A veteran and grandfather of seven, Hensley points to the environmental advantages of wind power. "If they’re producing 36 percent of the time, that’s 36 percent of the time you’re not burning coal or natural gas."

Among workers on the site, the excitement about the project is palpable.

Dan Kelley is the electric construction manager for subcontractor RMT Inc., an environmental engineering firm. Over the past 35 years, he has worked on similar projects in Dodge City, Kan., Knoxville, Tenn., and upstate New York. Part of his work is to make sure underground cables are correctly connected to power substations.

Kelley lives in King City now, and he won’t leave until the project is completed.

"I’ll be the one that turns the light off when we leave," he said. "I’ve volunteered for every one of these that comes up. I really think the wind industry is where we need to be going."

During lunch hour at the Aberdeen Steak House in King City, Bluegrass Ridge workers stood out. Clad in orange safety vests, blue jeans and steel-toed work boots, they discussed the day’s work and ate lunch before heading back to the wind farm on a recent rainy day. It was a busy in the restaurant, and Hensley skipped easily between conversations about the wind farm and the fall harvest.

"A lot of these people kind of follow the wind farm construction," he said.

One of them is David Waltemath, a King City banker and farmer who agreed to let Wind Capital Group build four wind turbines on his property. Between bites of a hamburger, he said the project was an easy sell to him and the other dozen landowners who will have turbines on their land.

The turbines make little noise, Waltemath said, and farmers can plant crops right up to their 15-foot-wide bases. He said the economic benefits of the project are exciting.

Particularly so, perhaps, in terms of his personal finances. Waltemath’s 25-year agreement with Wind Capital will bring him between $3,000 and $5,000 per turbine per year.

"We’re happy," he said. "We’re happy with how it’s affecting the community. It’s just helped everything."

Virgil and Rita Case, retired farmers who live on 80 acres on Highway 169, can see No. 27 from their home. It’s literally in their backyard, and the two say giving up a small portion of their land for the wind turbine was an easy sell.

Carnahan, in a meeting last year, asked the Cases and other landowners in King City for their land.

"We decided right there that it was going to help the economy," Virgil Case said.

Rita Case said there also are other advantages to having the wind farm in town. "We can look out our east window and see it," she said. "We think it’s pretty."

Back at the post office, Darnell and Deshler discussed what’s going to happen to the roads Wind Capital built to accommodate the large trucks that brought the turbines to the site. They also wondered what, exactly, the machines will look like when they’re finally constructed.

"I’m anxious to see those propellers." Darnell said.

Source:
http://www.columbiatribune.com/2006/Nov/20061112Feat006.asp