On a recent day trip to Manitowoc, Wisconsin I decided to take a closer look at something I had noticed before. Near Fond du Lac, Wisconsin I had seen a wind farm from afar and I had been wanting a closer look. I just drove my car down an access road and parked directly under the spinning blades, mostly to irritate my long-suffering wife who had to look up at the spinning blades of kinetic death through the moon roof. The Blue Sky Green Field Wind Energy Center is an 88-tower complex rated at about 145 MW in generation capacity and covers a very large area.
It was a somewhat windy day and the blades were energetically spinning away, silent as could be. Truthfully I liked their looks; gleaming white towers topped by impressively-large rotors and a generator each. While others, Ted Kennedy et al, don't care for wind farms messing up their yachting and concurrent scenery I don't think I'd mind living near a wind farm. At almost 400 feet from the ground to the tip of the highest blade the turbines are definitely a noticeable element of the man made terrain yet oddly not so obnoxious. Perhaps I just have an unusual aesthetic.
My daughter had a wonderful time running around the base of the tower, pulling on the (locked) door hoping to climb up, and posing for pictures looking for all the world like someone who had the world's largest beanie cap.
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