Michigan GREEN - Energy No Longer Gone With The Wind at KVCC

Strong winds will be welcome at Kalamazoo Valley Community College from now on, but not on Jan. 27-28, thank you.

Those are the tentative dates for crews to use a large crane to lift a trio of 25-foot blades to the top of a 40-yard tower on the Texas Township Campus, install them, and put the finishing touches on a 145-foot wind turbine, the first 50-kilowatt installation in Michigan.

"Like the postman, rain, sleet or snow will not derail the process," says Jim DeHaven, vice president for economic and business development at KVCC, "but significant winds will throw a monkey wrench into the installation.

Added DeHaven: "The three blades are heavy and expensive. "They have to be lifted carefully by the crane and held in place to be properly connected."

When that last bolt is ratcheted into place on the $250,000 turbine project, Kalamazoo will be poised to be known once again as "The Windmill City." This modern "windmill" will be ready to generate up to 15 percent of the energy needed to power the technical wing at KVCC.

KVCC's wind turbine, which could be the first of four, overlooks the soccer and ball fields on the west end of the campus. The project is viewed as an investment in energy conservation and in technical education.

An indicator that "everything old is new again," Kalamazoo is flashing back to its industrial history when in the late-19th and early-20th centuries, the city was home to several major manufacturers that, at their peak, made 4,000 windmills annually and sold 1,500 to overseas markets.

Designed, built and installed by Entegrity Wind Systems Inc., which has its U. S. headquarters in Boulder, Colo., this wind-user supplements the energy source needed to power large buildings and combats rising utility rates. Its purchase and installation is being funded by one of the college's "Innovative Thinking" grants.

"This will be the first installation of this particular turbine in Michigan," DeHaven says.

It will also be a powerful teaching and learning tool for KVCC's technical programs, and serve as the symbol of the college's plans to establish a Wind Energy Center.

Earlier this year, according to Deborah Dawson, KVCC's dean of business and advanced technology, the Michigan Energy Office awarded the college a $6,000 grant to purchase equipment to provide students "real-time" experiences with this alternative source of energy and train the next generation of technicians in this field.

One of the purchases was a miniature version of a three-bladed turbine with a five-foot propeller span. KVCC's technical programs are infusing wind-power components into their curriculums. In the works is a one-year, 35-credit-hour certificate for wind-energy technicians.

Other objectives include educating the public about alternative sources of energy and to get high school students, such as those enrolled at the Kalamazoo Area Mathematics and Science Center, involved so that they can increase their knowledge and awareness about the efficiencies of wind energy.

"An educational institution leading by example is the way I see it," DeHaven says. He believes the KVCC Wind Energy Center, which will be based in the M-TEC on the college's Groves Campus along I-94, will have educational, job-training, employment, entrepreneurial, and research-and-development ramifications for Southwest Michigan.

Slated for later will be an official "commissioning" of the wind turbine, a formal event that will include invitations to the governor, congressional and legislative representatives, and community leaders.

The turbine operating at the WMU College of Engineering and viewable along U. S. 131 is a 1.8-kilowatt unit. The one on the Texas Township Campus will 25 times more powerful.

While wind is now "in," it's been a long time coming, according to one of Entegrity's executives.

"The time for wind energy came with the first Arab oil embargo in late 1973 when it became evident that energy was such a big part of the economy of everybody," said Malcolm Lodge, who has 30 years of wind-energy engineering to his credit as the firm's president and chief technical officer.

According to a Michigan State University study, Michigan could produce 320,000 megawatts of energy -- more than 10 times the amount of electricity needed during a peak-use period -- if 100,000 offshore wind turbines operated along the Great Lakes. That would be 80 times greater than the projected output of the world's largest wind farm being planned by billionaire T. Boone Pickens in Texas.

In addition to the free winds that come across Lake Michigan, the state has the manufacturing infrastructure and technical workforce to become a major player in this industry. While the United States ranks second globally to Germany in the generation of electricity courtesy of the wind, that amount is only 1 percent of the nation's total energy output.

Regarding noise and peril to winged wildlife, John Patten, a WMU professor of engineering who is serving as the college's consultant on the wind-energy project, told an audience last fall that "windmills generate no more noise than the average conversation, and kill fewer birds than cats, cars and skyscrapers - less than one for every 10,000 killed by humans."