First wind-powered town in the USA is on the grid
I was away for a week or so, but I’ve been keeping my ear to the ground, sort of, and catching stories online that are worth talking about.
Rock Port, Missouri is the first town in the United States to be powered completely by wind!
From the article:
The U.S. Department of Energy wants to make wind energy the source of 20 percent of the country’s electricity. Officials admit this could take decades. So how did Rock Port do it? Mayor Helen Jo Stevens says she still wonders “how did this ever happen to a little old town like ours?”
The turbines were the brainchild of resident Eric Chamberlain, who used to work at a mortuary. He says the idea came to him as he was driving to a funeral in northern Iowa. On the way, he passed some wind turbines and thought, “Why can’t we do this? We’ve got wind.” He began researching the technology and eventually started recording wind data.
It’s a nice start, but of course there’s much more to be done to make the US less dependent on coal- and oil-derived power. It is just one town, after all, and there’s so much more of the US to cover.
And there’s not just wind to rely on, either - I’ve checked out a few studies that say a huge array of solar panels the size of some US states could power all of the US, and in-depth articles like this one (from geek site Extreme Tech) about converting a home completely over to solar power encourage others to think about doing the same, either partially or all the way.
Part of the problem right now is that the technology is still new (well, new compared to coal and gas power) so it’s still relatively expensive. A good analogy might be that boiling water over a burning piece of wood is one thing; using the sun’s rays to boil the same amount of water is something else. Even with significant advances in solar tech just in the last year or so (printing solar cells, cheaper production costs through increased manufacture, etc.), there’s still quite a way to go to make it more affordable for the average homeowner.
Here’s hoping more towns work to make up the first wave of energy-independents in the US!
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