05/22/08 Idaho wind power

It was just a couple of years ago that Idaho had its first wind power turbines. The late Bob Lewandowski built and operated them on a farm near Mountain Home. Those three machines are not operating today but 50 other Idaho wind power turbines are cranking out 75 megawatts of electricity. STEINER "The door is wide open for wind energy. It's a very new field. There's a lot of capacity that can be delivered." John Steiner of Idaho Windfarms is also a rancher who believes wind power generation and farming go hand in hand. STEINER "When you farm a farm such as we do in large amounts of land, you don't quite harvest the crop until you've harvested the wind on your ranch." A good example of that is a Mountain Home project on 38 hundred acres of private farm land. STEINER "We have placed the wind turbines so that the farmer can complete his farming project and not change that at all. The wind machines take up very little space, it does not affect the livestock at all and it's very little impact to all the community services." Steiner insists that wind power has a bright future and that's what we'll look at tomorrow. Voice of Idaho Agriculture Bill Scott