Small Scale Wind

Small Scale Wind

Small Scale Wind. I’m Greg Martin as Line On Agriculture presents the Harvest Clean Energy Report.

The renewable energy business is still in it’s infancy but this big baby is really starting to grow up fast and many people are taking advantage and riding on the cutting edge. Kardon Construction out of Lyons, Oregon is one such company.

ZERKEL: In 2007/2008 we started Kardon Construction and we were doing primarily energy efficiency improvements for multi-family apartments. Strictly weatherizing. Putting in new windows, insulation.

That’s Karen Zerkel with Kardon who says when the economy went bad in 2008 they had to lay off their employees and it was by chance that they discovered a new direction.

ZERKEL: We were invited to a small wind installation workshop and Don went and became a trade ally for small wind. I went for one day and I learned about all the grants and incentives and so between the two of us we were able to put together really a package for our customers and our customers are farmers.

They have installed 9 small wind turbines on farms using the Jacobs 31-20 20kw turbine. There is another up-side to the business as well.

ZERKEL: It creates work for about 18 local suppliers and subcontractors. We’re getting the customers about 90% of the funding they need to put up the wind turbines but all of that money is going back into the local economy so we’ve been able to hire a part-time employee so again we’re helping the farmers and we’re helping the community. And we firmly believe all of these government incentives that are out there should stay in America and so we only put out made in the USA products

Of course with any new technology there are likely to be a lot of questions. Zerkel talks about the most popular question she gets asked.

ZERKEL: Everyone thinks they have wind. It’s not true. We find it challenging - a lot of the smaller I would say residential, the ranchette people will want small wind and they just don’t have enough room and so what we do is we have a checklist that we go through over the phone with the customer and unless everything is a “Yes” we’ll pursue forward and do a site assessment so there’s a lot that we look at

For additional information on clean energy, visit harvestcleanenergy.org. That’s today’s Line On Agriculture. I’m Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.???www.harvestcleanenergy.org 

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