Don Quixote had nothing on us. In the 1970’s, the idea that we could harvest electricity from the wind was mocked in country song and political cartoons. They were channelling the skepticism of financial pundits and business writers everywhere. To most of the world, energy from out of thin air was an absurd fantasy.
But in 1973, our country endured an oil embargo that crippled the entire economy. As a society, we were so dependent upon oil and its by-products that even small disruptions of supply triggered price increases that rippled throughout the economy. This big intentional act disrupting our oil supply by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, OPEC, was seen as an existential threat to our country. Seated behind his desk, wearing a cardigan sweater in an office where the thermostat had been turned down to save energy, President Carter declared the energy crisis “the moral equivalent of war” in a speech he gave in April, 1977.
Whether it was patriotism or just a hippie dream, a movement for “alternative energy” as it was dubbed, was soon born. Do-it-yourself projects came to life in basements and garages everywhere. The Mother Earth News and the Whole Earth Catalog disseminated information that fed a generation of inventors and tinkerers working to free America from Middle Eastern oil sheiks, just trying to live off the land free of such concerns. It was a movement that attracted people of all ages and backgrounds. The romantic image of a sun setting behind a farm and windmill on the horizon was used countless times to promote books, events and products promising that the Age of Aquarius was about to dawn.
Our country was in no position to engage the oil companies in war. Our biggest idea was to buy enormous quantities of oil that we then stored underground to use as a savings account to draw upon in the next crisis. The project made lots of money for the oil companies and its shareholders and as a result received the full support of Congress.
The president signed the bill creating the Department of Energy in August of 1977. Its budget was dominated by Dept. of Defense priorities surrounding nuclear energy and nuclear wastes, but it also had a budget to look forward at possible means for the U.S. to become energy independent. Out of that budget came funds provided to the states to develop their own energy programs. Wisconsin had no oil or other obvious energy resources, thus, Governor Lee Dreyfus directed the State of Wisconsin to begin a wind anemometer loan program within the Dept. of Administration to determine is our state could generate energy out of thin air.
Sher and I had moved out to Rosiere in 1978. The little brick farmhouse we acquired sat on top a ledge of rock overlooking farmland in all directions. The hilltop was a shoulder to Brussels Hill, a rocky mound that tourists on their way to Door County took as a landmark before the big highway was built. We were about three miles due south of Brussels on a shoulder of Brussels Hill that was almost as high. And the wind was blowing whenever we stepped outside.
A story in the local newspaper alerted us to the State’s anemometer loan program. The state would loan out anemometers to measure wind speeds for interested citizens over a period of eight months. There was a fifty dollar fee to apply for the program, which was a way to limit applications to those who were seriously interested.
We sent in our $50.00 and were accepted, signing our agreement on October 11, 1980. We were excited about setting up our equipment. We felt that we were doing our part in the President’s “moral equivalent of war” effort. Some day there might be wind energy projects in our area if the information we were about to collect was good enough.
The equipment we received was underwhelming. It wasn’t meant to provide the kind of hard data one could literally take to the bank as evidence a wind generator would pay for itself at our location. Instead, it was an affordable way to measure wind speed just forty-five feet off the ground. It would be preliminary data, to determine whether more sophisticated equipment should be installed whose data you could take to the bank.
But our equipment was underwhelming. We received a metal trash can. Inside the can was a small data recorder and batteries to keep it running. The recorder had wires that ran out the trash can and up a telescoping tower held upright by a dozen cables strung out and moored to the ground with metal stakes.
At the top of the tower was a small wind measuring device that looked like three measuring spoons on an axle; the anemometer. The device spun in the wind and our data recorder in the trash can below counted the speed at which it turned. The recorder was a standard device for its time. It consisted of a pen that moved up and down relative to the speed of the anemometer, recording its measurements on a piece of graph paper. The graph paper was mounted onto a slowly rotating drum that was driven by a clock motor. After one week, the entire length of the graph paper had been written upon by the pen and it was time to change it out.
Collecting the data required Sher or I to head out at about the same time of day, on the same day of every week. When the snow drifted high, we took a shovel with us to clean off the cover of the trash can. If it was raining, we had to get wet. The wind tugged at the lightweight tower next to the data recorder, and the cables would slap in the wind from the tower’s flexing. Gusts would stretch taught the cables on the upwind side of the tower, while on the downwind side, the wires would go slack enough to vibrate in the wind and put out a low throbbing hum.
Our job was to change out the paper and put fresh, new graph paper in place for the upcoming week. We had to change the batteries as needed, and retighten the cables occasionally, too. The date and time when we changed the graph paper had to be recorded so that the data could be calibrated against time. The data we collected was mailed off to Madison each week to be compiled. It was hoped that we might find out daily, weekly or seasonal patterns to when and how much the winds blew.
We began our data collection in October of 1980, but lightning struck the tower in November. It knocked out the data recorder and we lost a month’s data as we waited for installation of new equipment. We added a grounding rod to the setup and thereafter were able to collect our data without incident.
There were ten sites where wind speeds were monitored. Our site wound up having both the highest average wind speed, and the greatest power density recorded. No other site in the state measured higher values for almost three years, when a site near Superior, WI finally recorded a higher wind speed.
The State of Wisconsin shared our data and that of all the other sites with the media and the electrical utilities serving the state. At the national level, the Dept. of Energy funded the development of bigger, more efficient turbines that could harness enough wind energy to be profitable producing electricity. Madison Gas and Electric (MG&E) took note of the State’s data, and set out doing more sophisticated analysis in the area around our test site after the bigger, more efficient machines started to became available.
In the 1990s MG&E confirmed that the area surrounding our test site had the necessary potential for a wind farm. They sought out and leased land from local farmers and began construction in 1998. When the project was commissioned to begin producing power in 1999, it consisted of seventeen wind turbines rated at 660 kilowatts each. The total power output of the wind farm was rated at 11.2 megawatts, enough power for over 3,300 typical homes.
At the time it was built, the Rosiere Wind Farm was the largest wind energy installation east of the Mississippi River. In 2019, MG&E celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the Rosiere Wind Farm. All of the machine’s are still operating as designed and producing steady power for MG&E customers.
Newer wind turbines are far larger and more powerful than the pioneering units built in Rosiere. Their added size requires more setback and space between the machines than what was needed in that pioneering installation. It is hard to find big enough wide open spaces in eastern Wisconsin for these new energy giants, so we may not see any more of them built in this area. Giant machines do grace hilltops in the western parts of our state where fewer people live nearby. There are studies underway, however, looking at building wind turbines out in Lake Michigan, far from shore.
Wind turbines have grown to be both bigger and more affordable so that they no longer need government subsidies to help cover construction costs. Utilities all across the country are replacing coal-fired power plants with wind turbines and solar panels. Even with the added cost of industrial sized batteries to keep the power flowing at all times, these projects produce electricity more cheaply than continuing to operate existing fossil fuel plants. We are witnessing the “Greening of America”.
This was all a fantasy in 1980. In the forty years since, a lot of trial and error has gone into creating the reality unfolding before us. We could imagine it happening back then, even if we couldn’t believe it would really come to pass in our lifetime. Our little study is lost to history except in a few file folders yellowing with age. Its results did not create or change anything we can measure. But it was the first, and we know there was a second and third study as well, building the case for the wind as an energy resource. We know the results when we drive to Door County and see the spinning turbines on the horizon. We know, many battles later, that the “moral equivalent of war” has had many battles to come this far, and that more battles are still to be fought. The ultimate winner of that war, however, is now a foregone conclusion.