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BUCHANAN COUNTY, Mo. - Wind energy is a renewable, clean and free resource that some people think is going to get more popular soon. But there are some big start up costs and other problems you should be aware of.
It's not as easy to harness the wind as you might think. But for those who can do it, they hope to save some money while saving the earth's resources.
Denise Meyer lives on a 100 acre farm in Buchanan County. She has a 33-foot tall wind turbine behind her house. Sizable, but much shorter than the huge turbines you might see on a commercial wind farm. It's a residential turbine. It provides 30 to 40 percent of her electricity most months.
"When it is spinning, it's humming, and I just kind of like to sit and watch it," Meyer said. "I don't mind the wind blowing now as much as I did before, because now I feel like it's making us a little bit of money."
Extra Power Generates Money
But we visited on a calm day, and when it's not moving, it's not making power.
When Meyer looked at the perfectly still turbine, she said, "I'm thinking, where is the wind?" and she laughed.
On windy days, the turbine generates enough to light her home. That extra power then goes back to Kansas City Power & Light and she gets credit off her next bill.
But when she still had her old meter, "It was really fascinating then because on windy days you could watch the meter go backwards."
Meyer spent $18,000 to install the turbine, and it could take 10 to 20 years to get enough free power to pay off that debt.
"It is a long time to wait, it's like farming; it’s a gamble," she said.
Wind Turbines Too New for Rules
Another gamble is zoning laws. Most governments don't have rules for residential wind turbines. So they use codes written for cell phone towers. Wind turbines are just too new.
"We try to retrofit wind turbines to cellular tower codes, and it can be difficult at times. It just doesn't quite fit," Clay County Planning and Zoning Director Matt Tapp explained.
Tapp said Clay County wants to make its zoning laws more progressive. So he's rewriting codes to come up with a new set of rules for wind turbines. Clay County is one of the first local governments to tackle this issue.
"Clay County, there are certain parts that are more friendly to sustainable wind energy, but there are certain parts that are not. And there are also a lot of parts of the metro that flat out cannot support a wind turbine, unless it's at an extremely high height,” Tapp said.
Turbines in the City?
So far, Clay County's proposed rule changes do not specify how much land you must have to install a residential turbine.
However, it would be difficult to build one in a typical suburban or urban neighborhood because the rules would require enough space in case a tower would fall.
"Just in case it does fail, it's more than likely not going to fall on an inhabited building or anything like that. And also, there's a lot of questions about the aesthetics," Tapp explained.
