By Daniel Human

CNHI News Service

BROOKSTON — The White County town of Brookston, with its 1,500 residents, meets the archetype of rural U.S.A. on first glance.

It has a school, a police station, family-owned downtown businesses and a corner gas station.

But just outside the rural hamlet, dozens of colossi leer over the town from their 20-story-plus loft.

Horizon Wind Energy has tapped into northern Indiana’s relatively abundant source of renewable energy on the west side of the county, which is about 15 miles north of Lafayette.

More than 100 turbines, the first phase of the company’s plan for 660 towers, reach more than 260 feet up and span the rural vista.

The machines gently sliced through the air the first week of March. They were collectively cranking out 200 megawatts of electricity, which is enough to power about 60,000 homes.

The diorama of agrarian life-meets-modern energy, which is about an hour’s drive northwest of Kokomo, is one that could come to Tipton County.

There has been no guarantee that AES Corp., E.ON Climate & Renewables North America and JW Great Lakes Wind LLC will build wind farms in the county. But all three have begun inspecting the area and negotiating leases with property owners, said Steve Edson, the executive director of the Tipton Plan Commission.

In April 2009, Madison County commissioners adopted an ordinance establishing rules for land use regarding wind energy farms. E.On is interested in building a wind farm north of Elwood and is conducting a two-year wind study in the county to determine if wind speeds are suitable for the new technology.

The county would join the growing popularity of wind farms around Indiana if the companies chose to build there. The state was the fastest growing in wind farm production in 2008 in the U.S. and No. 3 in 2009.

Edson attributed Tipton County’s sustained winds and easy access to electrical transmitters as the reason why AES, E.ON and Great Lakes have expressed interest in the area.

Out of the air

An acre of corn that yields a harvest worth a few hundred dollars could increase in revenue by as much as 10-fold if the farmer leases to a wind energy company, according to a renewable energy expert from Purdue University.

Chad Martin, who is an extension specialist for the university’s Department of Agricultural and Biological Engineering, said wind energy companies usually lease land for $5,000 to $10,000 per acre.

It’s an amount that made good business sense to White County farmer Walt Kelley.

Kelley, who has spent his life cultivating the 2,500 acres he owns west of Brookston, has leased land to Horizon. The company has built six turbines and plans to put up five more on his property. Each tower has about a half-acre footprint and leases for $7,500, he said.

“The best quote I heard was ... ‘We don’t like to farm around these obstacles. ... But it’s a bad business decision not to sign up,’” he said. “Any time you can give up $800 and trade for $8,000, it is a good decision.”

Job opportunities could also arise in Tipton County, which the Indiana Department of Workforce Development reported had 13.1 percent — roughly 2,000 people — out of work in January.

Martin said wind farms hire an average of six full-time employees, mostly to maintain the machines, for every 100 megawatts of electricity they produce. Turbines produce about 1.5 megawatts each, meaning there would be about one person hired for every 10 turbines that went up.

“I would say from an economic development opportunity, there’s not many chances for a small community to get this kind of growth,” he said. “In other urban centers, 50 jobs coming to a community, when there’s a large urban area, it’s not as noticed. When wind farms come, it does put people back to work. We need jobs.”

Up with utilities

Wind energy has historically been more expensive to produce than coal, meaning it has caused utility rates to increase. But the wind energy won’t necessarily be used in the area because many companies ship out of state.

According to American Wind Energy Association statistics, an average house that received 10 percent of its energy from wind would have paid an extra $24 per month in the 1980s.

Wind energy advancements and tax credits have brought that rate down significantly, according to the association. A house today using an average amount of energy, about 800 kilowatt hours per month, would pay an extra $1.60 if 10 percent of its power was wind-supplied.

The rate increase may not be in the Tipton County area, Martin said, because Indiana’s central location makes it a good hub to ship to other states.

“Because of transmission access, it’s a primary reason why Indiana has become such a popular location of wind farms,” he said. “We can get the power either east or we can send it west. Places like Wyoming, the Dakotas are a gold mine as far as resource. But they don’t have the capacity because of the transmission.”

Other factors, such as increasing demand in growing areas, could cause utility rates to go up as well, Martin said.

Although wind farms are more expensive to build, increased demand for clean energy and government incentives, such as those from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, are motivating the energy companies to build.

“It’s long-term strategy with the wind farms and wind development,” he said. “Of course policies will have to be there to support these types of strategies. A lot of companies are relying on capital subsidies to make these viable.”