Newspapers In Education Visit NIE online at www.sidneydailynews.com, www.troydailynews.com or www.dailycall.com
NIE Coordinator: Dana Wolfe / Graphic Designer: Scarlett E. Smith
Ohio’s First Wind Farm Visitors passing southwest of Bowling Green will see farm fields, small towns, stands of hardwoods and towering windmills that generate enough power to supply approximately 780 homes with clean, renewable energy. On November 6, 2003, American Municipal Power Ohio and Austin, Texasbased Green Mountain Energy Company dedicated Ohio’s first utility-scale wind farm near the Wood County community. People have harnessed wind power for thousands of years. Sailboats were probably the first use of wind power. The sail probably inspired the first builders of windmills. The first recorded windmills were developed in Persia about 500 to 900 C.E. to automate the tasks of grain-grinding and water-pumping. Those machines had vertical sails made of bundles of reeds or wood. Windmill technology spread to northern Europe, where Dutch windmills were used to pump water. Between 1850 and 1970, more than 6 million mostly small mechanical output wind machines were installed in the United States alone. The main application was pumping water for livestock and farm homes. Large windmills were used to pump water for steam trains that provided transportation in areas without navigable rivers. The first use of a large windmill to generate electricity was a system built in Cleveland in 1888 by Charles F. Brush. The Brush machine was a postmill with a multiple-bladed “picketfence” rotor 17 meters in diameter. It had a large tail hinged to turn the rotor out of the wind. Today, wind turbines range in size from small, affordable single-home systems to wind turbine farms that supply a large amount of electricity to hundreds or thousands of customers. The Bowling Green wind farm has two turbines with blades that stretch 132 feet and sit on towers 257 feet high. Each turbine is rated at 1.8 megawatts, making them the largest rated capacity turbines operating east of the Mississippi River.
Words to Know: renewable harnessed postmill rotor
automate turbines
A turbine at Bowling Green’s wind farm (photograph courtesy of City of Bowling Green)
For Discussion: 1. Some Ohio farms still have windmills, but many no longer operate. What were these used for? Do you think they have any value to us today? 2. Ancient windmills were made of wood or reeds. Bowling Green’s wind farm has metal “sails.” What are the pros and cons for using each material in a windmill? 3. Wind generators are usually practical where the average wind speed is 10 mph (16 km/h or 4.5 m/s) or greater. Go online to http://rredc.nrel.gov/wind/pubs/ atlas/maps/chap2/2-01m.html to find the average wind power available in Ohio. Would wind power be a possibility throughout the state?
navigable megawatts
Newspaper Activity: Wind power is considered a clean, renewable energy source. Look through today’s newspaper for examples of people using or businesses offering environmentally friendly technology. “Ohio: The Inside Story” is produced through a grant from The Ohio Newspapers Foundation, a nonprofit charitable and educational organization affiliated with The Ohio Newspaper Association. This is one of a series of 24 Ohio profiles.
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