You don’t need to operate a big wind farm on the Buffalo Ridge in western Minnesota to be a wind power provider. Ask Elliott Bayly, who’s been in the small-scale wind-energy business for three decades.
Bayly is founder and president of Duluth-based Ventera Energy Corporation, which builds wind turbines that are high-tech, more efficient versions of the windmills that were once fixtures on Midwestern farms. While large-scale, corporate wind-farms, such as those being developed across the U.S. midsection, have received most of the attention, small-scale wind turbines—those generating 100 kilowatts or fewer for homes, farms, and small businesses—have experienced major growth in the past decade. The American Wind Energy Association projects 18 to 20 percent annual growth through 2010.
An engineer by training, Bayly bought his first wind turbine from a farmer to power a small radio station he operated in Colorado. After moving back to his hometown of Duluth, he operated a wind-generator company, Whirlwind Power Company, from 1982 to 1988, until federal wind-power subsidies ended. In 1990, Bayly founded World Power Technologies to design and build turbines; he sold that company 10 years later.
Bayly launched Ventera in 2004, making 10-kilowatt turbines to enable Midwest farms to connect to the power grid and sell extra juice to utilities. Under Minnesota law, wind turbines generating fewer than 40 kilowatts qualify for net energy metering, meaning that public utilities are required by federal law to buy these small wind systems’ “excess” energy production at the retail rate.
The Ventera VT10 is controlled by a microprocessor programmed to control the propeller’s revolutions per minute to its optimum value for every wind speed. The company sells kits to build two types of towers ranging from 70 to 110 feet in height—one self-supporting, the other supported by guide wires. (A Ventera device called the VI12 synchronous inverter can be hooked up to the VT10 to maximize its energy output, as well as the wattage produced by solar panels.) According to Bayly, the payback period ranges from 10 to 15 years in areas with good wind, such as southern and western Minnesota.
Bayly’s first VT10 went into operation in November 2007 in Minnesota. Ventera now sells about three turbines a month, “right on schedule with our business plan,” he says. Ventera’s market is limited to Midwest farm areas with plentiful wind exposure. “They’re difficult to place in urban settings, because most city zoning codes don’t accommodate” the tall towers needed, Bayly says.
Bayly hopes that his sales will benefit from a new federal tax credit for small wind turbines that took effect on October 3. This credit could reduce payback periods to fewer than 10 years.
Not all rural areas have enough wind for small turbines—northeastern Minnesota, for instance. “But we estimate there are 24,000 farmers in Minnesota with 100 acres or more, and 90 percent of those are located where the wind is,” Bayly says. “Iowa and Kansas each have three times as many farmers in good wind areas. So our potential market is huge if we can get it.”
