A wind farm or wind park also called a wind station or wind farm, is a collection of wind turbines at a single site used for generating electrical power.
Farms have windmills because windmills were usually attached to wells, and the windmill would pump water from the well as it turned in the wind. This allowed farmers during the 19th century to leverage wind energy to gather water. Today, windmills are a relic kept mostly for aesthetic purposes.
Wind farms are areas in which several large wind turbines are clustered together. Large wind turbines are becoming more common in rural areas, and, much like the ethanol and biodiesel industries, wind power is yet another example of agriculture becoming an important supplier of renewable energy.
U.S. wind power generation has grown by seven times over the past decade, with more than 53,000 turbines across 41 states producing more than 84,000 megawatts of power–enough to power almost 25 million homes nationwide. Wind turbines are producing inexpensive, pollution-free energy, while more than 30 states have established goals that call for 2% (South Carolina) to 100% (California, Hawaii, Maine, and Washington) of their energy to come from renewable sources. Some farmers are buying wind turbines too, while others are starting to establish wind co-ops.
Windmills Can Supplement Farming Income
In some areas, wind farms have started making small payments to landowners who do not have turbine sites on their land, but are close to the farms, simply to level the playing field. For some, leasing payments from the wind farm for the installation of a turbine have increasingly provided a cushion from the tough economics of farming.
A 2014 study found that Michigan landowners who had wind turbines on their properties invested twice as much in their farms, in things such as house improvements, outbuildings, and equipment, as compared with landowners living in towns with no wind farms.
That is, the research shows wind makes a huge difference to farmers who own and farm on turbine-powered land. For years, farmers have been leasing parts of their fields for wind turbines as a way of increasing revenue, but have wondered about the impact on crops, says atmospheric scientist Julie Lundquist. Usually, that is been a good experience for the landowner, but a group of plant and soil scientists wanted to know whether the same was true of crops grown near the wind farms and whether that changed microclimates for corn and soybeans.
Turbines Are Often Near Cropland
With wind power growing dramatically over the last decade, turbines are frequently placed in or near cropland – leading farmers and researchers alike to question the impact rotating blades could have on corn, soybeans, and other crops. Some of the most prominent studies are being conducted in the Midwest, America’s heartland, where windy fields have been perfect for wind farms.
From highly invested utility-scale wind farms, developers are learning much about turbulence and the crowding effects of large-scale wind projects that were not studied in the United States before, because there were no operating large-scale wind farms on which to perform this kind of research.
Farmers’ dependence on windmills to irrigate crops and support livestock has created a belt of windmills through farmland and ranchland across the Great Plains, a perfect region for windmills: arid regions in the West, plentiful groundwater, and consistent winds. Soon, the windmill was a familiar fixture on farms, drawing water for cattle and making cattle ownership a possibility in relatively arid areas of the Western United States.
In time, tens of thousands of windmills came into use, mostly to pump water out of wells that had been dug. The first serious competition that the conventional Windmill faced came from small combustion engines used for mechanized tasks, including pumping water supplies, by some farmers and ranchers.
Windmills in the Great Plains
Beginning in the 1920s, some residents of the Great Plains began using windmills specifically designed for producing electrical power, mostly for home use. From the late 1800s to the 1930s, farmers used the wind for water pumping, wheat milling, and, in small amounts, to produce electricity for self-sufficiency.
As technology advanced, more farmers installed modern windmills, which converted wind to electric power; this electrical energy could then be used for irrigation of crops. A small minority of the early windmills converted the power from the wind to spinning power for operating small agricultural machines, such as grain mills, corn shellers, and lumber saws.
The intermittent nature of wind energy may present challenges to maintaining stable electric power grids, with wind farms providing large proportions of power to a single area.
The remaining wind power capacity – less than 3% – comes from community wind farms, where a group of landowners band together and install as many as 10 turbines. Sometimes farms with large power needs, schools, or businesses set up wind operations of one or two turbines, said Tom Wind, who does wind projects engineering and pre-engineering and analysis, and who owns Wind Utility Consulting PC, out of Jefferson, 60 miles northwest of Des Moines.
The Leasing of Turbines and Government Aid
The leases of the wind turbines, typically for 30-to-40 years, give surrounding landowners annual revenue that, while not huge, helps offset the economic downturns brought on by droughts, floods, tariffs, and the constantly varying prices of crops and livestock produced. For Pete Ferrell, leasing wind turbine land is a reminder of the side gigs and city jobs that many farmers and ranchers have needed all along to make ends meet.
Wind farms produce taxes, or payments, to governments, and many counties use that money to build roads and other infrastructure, hospitals, and schools. Wind farms are composed of large numbers–from several hundred to thousands–of separate plants, ranging from one to eight megawatts, producing several hundred megawatts provided that wind drives them with the right amount of energy.
Wind farms – horizontal-drive-based — built-in remote areas because of their visual impacts and noise constitute a substantial portion (about 15% of the total power generated) of renewable power development, as opposed to solar thermal and PV plants, which account for approximately 5%[107,108] or 0.7% of the total power generated. Generating enough wind power to supply power to 120,000 homes, Grande Prairie Wind Farm could help Omahas publicly owned electric utility meet its goal of achieving net-zero carbon emissions by 2050.
