Earth, Water, Wind and Sun

PHOTOS COURTESY RON ASKIN DRILLING

TECHNOLOGY CHANGES, IMPROVES WATER SUPPLY

By Tamara Choat I n the 18th century the Great Plains were referred to as the “Great American Desert,” unfit for cultivation. There was water – but it was 300 feet under the earth. The development of the metal windmill to supply water for livestock, gardens and home life opened up the entire fron- tier to settlement.

Water has always been a limiting factor in land use.

Windmills were the original “off-grid” solution, but as new solar technology becomes available, turbines are slowly starting to join horse-drawn wagons and black powder rifles. Even with the advent of electric water pumps, most places where water is desired on ranches were – and still are – far from electricity.

Over the years, solar wells have slowly replaced windmills across the scenic plains of Eastern Montana.

Ron Askin Well Drilling estimates they have drilled over 5,000 new water wells in Eastern Montana in their 110 years in business.

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PHOTO COURTESY TAMARA CHOAT

Lon Reukauf and his family, owners of Cherry Creek

Ranch north of Terry, Mont., have replaced many of their historic ranch’s windmills with more efficient solar pump systems.

Doug Askin is the third generation to run Ron Askin Drilling in Miles City, Mont. His grandfather, George Askin, began running a rig at 14 years old during the homestead boom. The family estimates they have drilled more than 5,000 water wells in Eastern Montana.

Today Askin still repairs windmills, but the new water systems he puts in place are all solar. “It’s been a long time since we put in a new windmill,” he says. Solar pumps are able to pump deeper and get more water. Windmills tend to be limited to 200-300 feet in a lot of areas, but solar can go 500 feet deep and beyond. And where a windmill would pump 2-4 gallons a minute, solar pumps get 5-12 gallons.

“Solar has opened up a lot of new areas and deep aquifers where ranchers were not able to get water in the past with a windmill unless they had a generator and a submersible pump,” he says.

Solar pumps are not only more efficient, putting out more water in less hours a day, but the pump mechanism is different, with less metal parts to rust out. Additionally, solar pump systems are about half to one-third of what a new windmill would cost. An average system he estimates runs around $6,000, but can vary depending on the size of the pump and depth of the well. Askin estimates he has put in just under 100 new solar pumps in the last year alone.

He says the nature of the area and the people he works with make for some memorable sites. “Those pastures way back in the hills, where you turn off the county road and it still takes two hours to get to the location, and the

rancher has been working for a week to build us a road to get there – those are the sites you remember.”

Lon Reukauf, with his family, owns Cherry Creek Ranch north of Terry, Mont. Eight years ago the Reukaufs started installing solar panel water pumps, slowly replacing the windmills on their ranch that is one of the last remaining homesteads in the area. At one point they had 13 windmills on the place; today there are only six or seven left.

“Wind doesn’t blow. It sucks,” says Reukauf.

“If you think about it, the windy seasons tend to be around both the spring and the fall equinoxes. Mid-summer is not a very windy time. And the more hours of sunlight you have, the more water animals need.”

Ironically, at one of his windmill sites Reukauf had installed a 25-foot concrete-bottomed water tank, designed to stockpile water during the summer. Today, on a solar system he says the storage tank has almost become unnecessary. “The solar pump can keep up with 250 head of cow-calf pairs; the storage really isn’t as critical anymore.”

The Reukaufs continue to make stewardship improvements in their land, even as the third generation moves home to continue their ranching legacy.

Any rancher who has watched cattle crowd a stock tank waiting for a breeze can agree wind is not reliable. “But solar lends itself pretty good to meet this need,” Reukauf says. He estimates that to rely on a windmill a rancher will need 20 times the daily livestock water intake in storage. “Solar is a lot less – maybe five times, not even that much, in reserve.”

In their remote location, electric wells have never been an option.

“We have large stretches of our ranch that don’t have powerlines, and even if you could run a new power line, they cost $40,000 per mile,” he says. They do have some sites connected to power, but they aren’t exactly feasible. “Our wells that run off of electricity have a $400 access fee before we even pay any power. The access fee is almost always more than the cost of the electricity we use,” he says.

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PHOTO COURTESY MONTANA STOCKGROWERS ASSOCIATION

The Reukaufs use a well-planned pasture conservation rotation (they were finalists in the 2016 Environmental Stewardship Award Program)

With use of solar energy comes gained wisdom, and adaptations to make the systems work best for their needs. The Reukaufs use a well-planned pasture conservation rotation (they were finalists in the 2016 Environmental Stewardship Award Program) and have designed some of their solar panel systems on trailers so they can pull them to the next well site when they move the cattle. This allows them to maintain fewer panel systems. They have also installed electric switches on all their solar pumps which let them convert to a fuel-powered generator and pump all night if needed. Most of their solar arrays consist of three or four 300-watt panels.

Even before adapting to solar, Reukauf has worked his lifetime to implement better water dispersion systems. On the top of a hill they set half of an old railroad car, reconfigured into a 10,000-gallon storage tank, with pipelines running to different pastures tanks. The lift from the bottom of the well to the tank is about 330 feet. “That takes a pretty hefty set of solar pumps to run that,” he says.

Reukauf says the cost of a solar pump is higher than a regular electric submersible pump – around $2,000 compared to $500 or so, and he says with the heavy use theirs get they only seem to last four to seven years. The electric generator converter is about $600, and he estimates a full system costs around $3,500. Using the resourceful management that has kept him on the land for three generations, Reukauf has partnered with several neighbors in the area to form a solar pump dealership so they are able to buy them at wholesale prices.

As solar continues to become a viable option for ranch water, those who utilize it will likely view it as just another way of making things better in their way of life that, for generations, has always been “off the grid.”