As Promised, I'm Learning More About Alternative Energy

After seeing the wind farm in Indiana last month, I was all psyched about the fact that Dominion was involved and that our energy providers are doing more than we generally know about developing alternatives. Those wind turbines looked so quite from inside the car. I hadn't considered what it might be like to live under one of them.

An article in the September/October issue of Orion gave me the opportunity to hear from someone who does. In the section of the magazine entitled The Place Where You Live, contributor Angela Cannon-Crothers wrote about wind turbines in The Finger Lakes, New York.

"Today the wind turbines, new to this landscape, churn slowly in a faded denim sky like goddesses dressed in white, flowing in some kind of prayerful meditation over the leafless wooded hills. I admire them, the hope they represent, the grace with which they move--never hurried, strong, assured. They symbolize humankind's ability to work with, and not apart from, nature. But I know that symbol is still an illusion, nothing is as it seems.

"They have risen over hills cleft with shale and slate ravines journeyed by the splash and pools of staircase waterfalls flowing out into the Finger Lakes of New York State. Four-hundred-foot-tall turbines, arching white wings two hundred feet wide, swirl sweet wind into a frosting we can taste. A reward our neighbors were paid dearly to host. High Tor Wildlife Management Area is a humpback genuflecting at their side. 

"You can see them for miles away. From my homestead I can count forty on a leafless day. Further away, along the stretch of Canandaigua Lake where the eagle nests, you can see them spinning in counterclockwise smiles of promises gone astray. 

"It is only the hill people who are disturbed--a constant noise like jet engines outside their windows, vibrations in their chest from low-decibel blade swagger, flickers like migraines, and blinking night lights in a cheery shade of Rudolf red, resembling some sort of UFO landing strip. 

"Coyote doesn't make his tracks here anymore because he doesn't recognize the roar. The bluebirds found new fields to nest in many wing beats away. These Appalachian sugar-maple ridgelines, this Concord-grape pie town, once known for its quiet, its rural appeal, and its night darkness, sold out our wind for the Light." (emphasis added)

The noise. No bluebirds? I hadn't considered the vibration. In listening to the pros and cons of wind turbine development I hadn't heard this, but it is indeed something to consider.

Our energy needs came up in another context this week, too. My stepson is an engineer. Because I drive a Prius and am interested in the topic, he sent information to me about an upcoming lecture on electric cars. Because it's for engineers and has more to do with the energy grid that needs to be developed in order to fuel electric cars, I'll pass on attending. However, I did look up the presenter, Saifur Rahman, and discovered that he is a professor at Virginia Tech and director of the Center for Energy and the Global Environment. I found my way to the Smart Grid Information Clearinghouse, where I learned more about our aging energy infrastructure and the critical need to update it.

For more information, visit the Smart Grid site. Watch the YouTube video, below, that explains a modern grid.