Going with the wind

When this one-blink Massachusetts town decided against nuclear power 20 years ago, residents turned to an energy source as ancient as time.

Today, the eight windmills they built still stand on the blustery slopes of Mount Wachusett, white sentries whose metal blades clank and turn in the breeze.

They haven't done a lot more.

On a good day, the windmills might power 30 of Princeton's 1,300 homes. It's the kind of tale that has made alternative energies and their earnest advocates the butt of many an oilman's joke.

But wind power just may be worth another look. Today it's the fastest-growing energy source in the world. And, despite their failed experiment, Princeton residents are among those banking on it.

The town has decided, at a cost of $3.75 million, to replace its struggling eight towers with just two - taller, sleeker, and incorporating all the technological advances of the past two decades. They are expected to generate nearly half the town's energy needs by next fall.

And this time around, Princeton has lots of company. Last year, enough wind energy came online in the United States to power roughly a half million homes. Next year, that number is expected to climb by another 100,000.

The very fact that Princeton is willing to give wind power another shot says much about how far the ability to harness nature has come - and why advocates say wind is poised to make the leap from green-movement boutique to mainstream energy source.

"Wind technology has come a long way in 20 years," says John Fitch, general manager of the Princeton Municipal Light Department. Turbine efficiency and the ability to choose good sites have both improved dramatically. "Now you can produce energy that's much more economical as well as better for the environment."

Not that anyone should expect hood-mounted windmills powering SUVs anytime soon. The reality is that wind power, now a source of less than a half percent of America's energy, won't by the most optimistic estimates provide more than 6 percent 20 years from now.

But the industry's recent growth, driven mostly by improvements in technology and cost, is more than the speculation of dreamers. For the past five years, it's grown by about 30 percent a year worldwide. In Denmark, it now accounts for some 15 percent of all energy use. And in this country, wind farms are working their way eastward, from Pacific Ocean bluffs and ranches in the shadow of the Rockies to the mountain ridges of the Appalachians and the coastal waters of the Atlantic.

To date, the most success has been seen in the Western plains, the vast swath of windswept land that stretches from west Texas northward to Minnesota and the Dakotas. In 2001, the state of Texas alone beat the previous national record for wind power installed in one year.

Much of this power comes from individual farms and ranches, whose owners are paid a fee by energy companies. "It's amazing how much better [the windmills] look when there's change jingling in your pocket," says Robert Thresher, director of the National Wind Technology Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in Golden, Colo.

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