Lessons in Wind Power
Iowa Policy Project
ESTHERVILLE,
Iowa – Wind-power pioneers in education held the attention Wednesday of
renewable energy advocates touring four Midwestern states on bicycles.
The
Wednesday leg of the six-day Green Bike Tour 2004 opened at Iowa Lakes
Community College, where riders met with 15 students from Iowa and
other states who are in a program for wind-machine maintenance.
“This
may be the only college in the nation doing this type of program,” said
David Osterberg, executive director of the Iowa Policy Project, which
is sponsoring the Green Bike Tour with the Minnesota-based League of
Rural Voters. The riders toured the Iowa Lakes facility, where a
new turbine is going up.
“The
community college will be producing wind power and selling it back to
the city, an example of how you can put everything together in a
moderate-sized town,” Osterberg said. “It's local economic development.
It's value-added. It's what we want to see happen.”
The tour
began Monday in South Dakota and Minnesota, moving to Iowa on Tuesday
with stops in both Iowa and Minnesota on Wednesday. By Saturday, the
riders wind up in Wisconsin, having seen several more examples of
renewable-energy development in the Midwest. As part of their effort to
show off sustainable energy technologies, three riders use bicycles
that carry solar panels to produce electricity.
After
visiting the wind turbine site near Estherville, the bicyclists went on
to Fairmount, Minnesota, and returned to Iowa in late afternoon, to a
stop at Lake Mills and on to the Top of Iowa wind farm near Joice
which a similar group visited in 2002 in a northern Iowa tour.
(Source: Iowa Policy Project)
Blog For Iowa 
ILCC's wind turbine is now up and running and the students are learning with hands-on training!! 2005
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