OLIVER TOWNSHIP — They stand like giant white pinwheels on the horizon, 32 of them towering 40 stories over the flat farmland in this tiny township in the Thumb, about 10 miles from the Saginaw Bay.
The Harvest Wind Farm turbines kick out 52.8 megawatts of power on 1,300 acres where corn and sugar beets grow; it's enough to furnish electricity for 15,000 homes. The $100 million investment was made by John Deere Wind Energy and the power is being purchased by Wolverine Power, a nonprofit electricity cooperative based in Cadillac.
Gov. Jennifer Granholm, who took a bus full of reporters Monday to tour the farm, would like to see hundreds more of them around the state.
"I see this as adding another sector in the Michigan economy," Granholm said.
"Because of history and our geography, we can jump ahead of other states" on wind power farms and turbine-making plants, Granholm told community leaders at Lake Elementary School. "You're really cutting the wake here for the rest of the state."
Wind power is a key part of Granholm's energy and economic development strategy. She has called for 10 percent of the state's electricity to be generated by renewable sources such as wind, biomass fuels and solar energy by 2015.
The state House last week passed legislation to accomplish that. The Senate has passed separate bills requiring that 10 percent of the power used by state government be generated by wind or other renewable sources by 2010 and 25 percent by 2025 — as long as the cost is within 5 percent of more conventionally produced electricity.
The governor hopes the renewable energy mandates will lure alternative energy companies such as wind turbine manufacturers to land here and create jobs. Michigan lost out last week when Emergia Wind Technology, a company based in the Netherlands, decided to put a factory in another state. But the company is considering Michigan for up to four other turbine manufacturing plants, according to Skip Pruss, Granholm's renewable energy adviser.
Brion Dickens, a member of the township planning commission that approved zoning for the project, said his community "just loves it. There have been no complaints. We hope to get more of them."
He said the wind farm has become a tourist magnet.
"We're getting more and more traffic from people who want to see the turbines," Dickens said.
While the wind farm is playing to mostly rave reviews in Huron County, beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Some property owners in Oceana County north of Muskegon recently fought a wind farm there, saying the towers would be a scourge on the bucolic landscape.
The prominence that wind can play in generating electricity in Michigan is a debatable issue. Some say it is too costly and unreliable to be a major player in the state's power portfolio.
Currently, the state has 35 wind towers generating about 60 megawatts of electricity, a tiny fraction of the state's total.
But Tom Stanton, coordinator of the state's renewable energy program for the Michigan Public Service Commission said there is plenty of untapped potential in wind power.
"The wind resource in Michigan is very, very significant," Stanton said.
A federal study ranks the state 14th in the nation for wind power potential. Lake effect winds and level farmland combine to create prime property for the stork-like wind mills.
But Stanton said the study likely doesn't include offshore potential.
While no one has proposed it, wind towers could be located five to 12 miles into Lakes Michigan, Superior and Huron out of sight from their beaches. Pruss said the state is seriously studying offshore turbine issues.
Granholm said offshore siting would have to be done with "extreme caution and sensitivity to tourism.
"I don't want to see turbines on the shore of Lake Michigan," she said. "Lake Superior may be an opportunity."
State studies have projected that wind power could generate 2,150 megawatts of power over the next seven years, about the capacity of three typical coal-burning plants. That would require more than 1,300 wind towers to be built.
Michigan is rated second in the nation for renewable energy infrastructure, said Soja Adelaja, a professor at the Land Policy Institute at Michigan State University.
"But we have to tap it," he said.
Aside from the Harvest Wind Farm, the state has two wind towers in Mackinaw City and one in Traverse City.
About two dozen others that would generate more than 3,000 megawatts of power are in various stages of planning or development in 16 counties, Stanton said.
But no wind farm siting has been as controversy-free as the Harvest project.
"It went so smoothly here I couldn't believe it," said Bob Krohn, Oliver Township clerk who has three turbines on his own property. "We had no opposition here."
