Wind Powers Couple's Appalachian Mountain Home
Associated Press
CLYDE,NC - It doesn't matter how nasty the weather gets this winter. Louis and Talitha Mes won't have to worry about their utility bills going up. In fact, they won't have to worry about them at all.
A short distance from their home, a wind turbine atop a 100-foot tower produces enough electricity -- with help from some solar panels -- to power their second home in Haywood County.
Louis Mes, a plastic surgeon who spends most of the year in Lafayette, La., designed the home on Crabtree Mountain to be energy efficient, with extra insulation, an open floor plan and an orientation that makes the most use of the sun's heat.
The house, where they spend about a third of the year, even has energy to spare for the state's electrical grid.
Although the project cost them about $40,000, they will get money back from Haywood Electric Membership Corp. and NC GreenPower for every kilowatt-hour they put back on the grid.
"Wind has great potential for growth among individuals interested in the technology," said Jeff Brooks, an NC GreenPower spokesman. "Education is key, and sites such as the Mes family wind project demonstrate the viability of wind power in our state."
Mes began studying the potential for a wind turbine last year. He used a weather station and recorded wind speeds on his ridge that averaged 12 mph, the minimum speed needed to make a turbine feasible.
The turbine started operating this month, making the Meses the first North Carolina homeowners to contribute wind-generated power to the electricity network.
The cost is really no more than a new truck and a boat, Mes told the Asheville Citizen-Times.
"You are doing it because you want to be green," he said. "It is all about the choices we make. Everyone can afford to conserve."
NC GreenPower, a nonprofit electric utility that encourages the use of renewable energy, is one of 38 such utilities offering the program to customers statewide.
Only two other wind turbines are supplying the grid for NC GreenPower, which gets most of its electricity from methane in landfills.
For a voluntary, tax-deductible $4 a month, a power customer can buy 100 kilowatt-hours of green power.
Wind is a potentially feasible source of energy in the Western North Carolina mountains for millions of people, according to a study at Appalachian State University.
But providing enough electricity for mass use would require windmill farms with thousands of turbines. The farms would likely meet resistance because of their noise and their presence in the rural landscape.
Even the Meses' three-blade single turbine was criticized by some neighbors who worried about how it would sound and what it would do to the mountain views.
For Talitha Mes, a wind farm full of turbines is still better than smog.
"Because," she said, "that means that in so many years I am still going to have all these trees."
newsobserver.com |
