Wind farm opponents routinely claim wind turbines are too noisy, disrupt sleep and heart health. That money, Krohn says, can turn a terrible year on his 1,400-acre corn farm into a decent one, and a good year into a great year. He said they bring in about $40,000 in annual revenue.

Now, 17 wind turbines sit on Krohn’s farm. Krohn was born in the house next door to his current home in Huron County, located at the tip of the “thumb” of Michigan’s lower peninsula. Multiple studies have concluded that wind turbines pose no significant health threats, and there are no signs the turbines cause cancer. ‘You got it from the windmills.’ It’s chemicals I used years back.” “It ain’t from the windmills,” the soft-spoken 77-year-old lifetime resident of Elkton, Mich., says. – So pervasive is the misinformation surrounding wind farms in rural Michigan that when Robert Krohn developed lung cancer, some of his neighbors who have known him for years said he probably got it from the 17 windmills Krohn has on his 1,400-acre farm. The Thumb area offered one distinct advantage using Great Lakes ships to transport the huge blades more economically to turbine farms in several Midwestern states.ELKTON, Mich. The contract went to Iowa, where the closed Amana appliance plant fit the need for a large manufacturing facility to produce turbine blades with production line efficiency. On the subject of benefiting from wind turbines, the Thumb area lost out on a great opportunity to manufacture huge carbon-fiber turbine blades for the thousands of new wind turbines on order. Noise and appearance are the two major complaints from neighbors who arent benefiting from this cheap source of power. Wind turbines are also unpopular with many people, as we have seen here in Huron County. Solar panels, on the other hand, are welcome virtually anywhere. The only problem with using wind generators at the present time is the lack of codes and established procedures by local governments across the country. estimates that a wind turbine can save a home owner $600 or more a year when compared to solar power generation. Using solar panels to produce the same amount of electricity would run about 18 cents a kw. He figures the cost of the energy produced at about 10 cents a kw. This has dropped his monthly electric bill by $400 or more. On a slightly larger scale, a small ranch owner in a more rural section of the Bay installed a 5 kilowatt (kw) wind turbine atop a 100-foot tower. Windterra has opened a sales office in the Bay area and has plans to open more offices across the USA if all goes well. This unit is not your classic wind mill atop a tall tower, but a horizontal bladed turbine with a vertical axis three wide paddles in a box-like frame. One interesting twist to this Bay area wind turbine adventure is that a Canadian company called Windterra, based in Calgary, Alberta, has developed a small roof-top wind turbine that can save about 35 percent on a homeowners electrical bill. California has a generous energy rebate program that can save as much as 50 percent of the initial cost.

A solar panel array for home use runs about $20,000, while a comparable roof-top wind turbine can be installed for around $6,500. As in any metro area, bureaucratic snafus, lack of codes and complaining neighbors seem to hamper any widespread usage.Ĭost-wise, a small wind turbine is much less expensive than installing roof-top solar panels. According to a San Francisco science writer named Janis Mara, the Bay area is a prime spot for what can be termed personal size wind turbines small enough to provide energy to a home owner without being concerned with any interconnect to the energy grid.

Home wind turbines michigan