Farming the Wind

Being on an island in the middle of the Pacific Ocean can be a blustery experience. Winds routinely whip across the coasts and tips of the island after they travel hundreds or thousands of miles across open ocean, without resistance. We have trade winds here, winds that blow at 10-15 miles per hour from the northeast direction on a regular basis. From May through October, trades blow 90 percent of the time. From October through May, they blow 65 percent of the time. All of this makes parts of the Big Island ideal for wind farming, where the wind spins giant turbines to produce electricity. The two best areas are the southern and northern tips of the island. Here you can see trees and bushes that are bent in one direction by the constantly blowing wind. Fences often lean to the side also. The rural road to South Point passes by the Kamoa wind farm, 20 year-old facility with 37 turbines that produces 7 megawatts a day. When you stop by the turbines and turn off the car, the spinning windmills make an eerie sound, a mechanical, pulsating whoosh-whoosh. They generate electricty because the blades of the windmill turn a shaft they are connected to, which powers a generator. The electricity is then fed into the public power grid. A couple new wind farms are planned that will triple the megawatts produced here. I wrote a story about the expansion of wind farms on the Big Island.