Breezy Great Lakes could be ideal source for wind power

[OKIsItJustMe]

http://www.superiortelegram.com/articles/index.cfm?id=32577§ion=News

Breezy Great Lakes could be ideal source for wind power

By Dan Egan/Milwaukee Journal Sentinel
Superior Telegram - 12/31/2008

…

His open-air restaurant on Madeline Island, called Tom’s Burned Down Cafe, is built from the remains of a charred beer hall and erected on a foundation of discarded railroad ties and phone poles. The kitchen and bathrooms are fashioned out of a worn-out semi trailer. The canopy over the place is made from anything waterproof he can find. One recent incarnation was an advertising banner plucked from the garbage at Minnesota’s Mall of America.

So you might be surprised he has a problem with some retired engineers who want to determine whether a wind turbine could be erected to supply electricity to the island’s population, which peaks in summer at about 3,000 residents. This fall they installed a temporary 165-foot-high tower in Big Bay State Park to gauge which way the wind blows, and how hard.

Nelson sees the study as a waste of a year’s worth of wind. The 54-year-old grumbles that the Apostle Islands town should just get on with it and buy an actual wind turbine. He says he’ll even donate a prime piece of his own land to help liberate his island from the polluting coal power he detests.

“It’s like this: You got an apple tree, it’s got some apples. We don’t need a committee to spend a year deciding whether we should pick those apples.”

…

[DCKit]

1. Not to be snarky, but, DUH. n/t

[Phred42]

2. not just wind - wave and thermal also

[OneBlueSky]

3. well, having lived in upstate New York for several portions of my life . . .

I can attest that the wind blowing off the east end of Lake Ontario can be pretty amazing . . . it's one of the reasons places like Watertown usually end up measuring their snowfall in feet rather than inches . . .

[applegrove]

4. They are planning to put a wind farm up on Wolfe Island near Kingston Ontario ..on Lake Ontario.