Indiana Wind Farms: Wind Turbines

Wind farms in Indiana towns are here, there, and everywhere! Okay, maybe that is a slight exaggeration but — there are a lot out there (particularly along I-65) and more popping up all the time.

Indiana Wind Farms

We get a lot of questions about Indiana wind farms because my husband was the wind farm whisperer. We live in a small town so everyone knows everything about everyone, don’t'cha know.

Before deciding to be the stay at home dad (yes, I work from home and yes, it was an adjustment, but it works for us) my husband was often the “go-to” guy when it came to problems with wind turbines.

He gave a talk at a church in Rensselaer, Indiana before and pretty much knows Indiana wind farms and the turbines inside them like he knows the back of his freckle-covered hand or the name of my favorite flower (daisy). Since there is so much interest in Indiana wind farms, I interviewed my hubby, Jeremiah Nunemaker, for the low-down on these giant green energy producers.

What is a Wind Turbine

Indiana wind turbines are giant monsters of steel. How big are Indiana wind turbines? Those you see around I-65 in Northwest Indiana are around 300 feet tall. Each blade of an Indiana wind turbine is 120+ feet and weighs 7 tons. Yes, that’s for  each blade.

A wind turbine is supposedly tornado proof (though I don’t think I’d want to test that!). The wind turbine image to the top left may help you visualize the size of these. That is part of just one portion of the wind turbine and you can see how it dwarfs the lead truck! Many of these compose an Indiana wind farm.

While hubs was in the industry, there weren’t very many elevators and certainly no heating or cooling systems inside. The only way up is to climb! There are such things as wind advisories and those with wind turbine jobs were not allowed in the field when the wind reached 30 meters per second. Some Indiana wind turbines do have elevators but not the sort of elevator you are imaging–think tilty, shaky and the opposite of stable.

Green Energy

You’ll hear people and companies boast that they are buying “green” power or energy however, they aren’t buying the literal power that is created by a wind turbine. What they buy is, for accounting purposes, the amount of energy produced by a wind turbine.

So, the power produced by a wind farm in Indiana can be purchased by a company or organization in Florida or California. The actual power used by a location is produced by a power plant local to that area. The energy is essentially purchased from the Indiana wind farm.

How a Wind Turbine Works

Driving through Indiana, wind turbines may seem like they are being powered by something other than wind. Nope. Each wind turbine moves solely due to the wind. The speed is controlled so that the power is uniform. The speed is actually controlled by several factors, one of which is the pitch of the blades.

Each Indiana wind turbine monitors the wind and adjusts itself accordingly. This is why you will see an entire farm of wind turbines moving at the same time.

A turbine can only adjust it’s rotation so many times before it has to unwind itself to prevent the wiring inside from winding too tightly. It can take 15 minutes for the Indiana wind turbine to make a full rotation.

Questions about Indiana Wind Farms?

Hopefully this sheds a little light on Indiana wind farms. Have any questions or comments about Indiana wind turbines for hubs to answer? Leave ‘em below! You can see photos of wind turbines and other pictures in Indiana on my Flickr photostream.

little Indiana: Where to Stay, Play, and Eat in Small Towns in Indiana. Discovering Indiana’s best small towns! Now get little Indiana on your Kindle.

New! Offering affordable online advertising for your small Indiana business! little Indiana Businesses is the online presence that you’ve been looking for.