Katy Turnbaugh, a retired science educator and engineer, is likely one of the few people in Carroll County with experience with wind generation. She had a small wind generator on her ranch south of Eureka Springs, and said it worked well with her solar panels to meet her electricity needs.
“The balance here is if we are going to use electricity, we know we can’t continue to produce electricity with hydrocarbons,” Turnbaugh said. “That is not working well for humans. We have to work with what we have. You have sun, wind, hydroelectric power and maybe a little geothermal. If you want to live a modern lifestyle with refrigeration, heating and cooling and electric cars, you have to accept a trade. I think wind turbines are beautiful. I remember first seeing whole ridgelines in California dotted with them and they looked like ballet dancers on a stage, in harmony.”
She recognizes problems with the production of wind turbines, and said she thinks the blades need to be made so they can be recycled. The length of the lives of turbines needs to be increased. But she has issues with using batteries to store solar power because of the pollution caused by mining lithium for the batteries.
Her wind generator was hit by lightning. Before that, she loved how the wind generator complemented her solar panels.
“The wind generator would kick up mid-afternoon and generate well at night when thermals came up the mountain,” Turnbaugh said. “When storms came in, it would generate quite well. Each one allows the other one to not have to be oversized.”
Turnbaugh said climate disruptions being seen now include more extreme heat and cold, more frequent and damaging storms including hurricanes, droughts, flooding and loss of glaciers. She said those impacts indicate we should have stopped burning carbon fuels such as coal, oil and gas whose pollution traps heat, 40 years ago.
“Arkansas is becoming extremely hot in the summer and we are experiencing a lot of cold in the winter,” Turnbaugh said. “This can’t continue. We can’t live like our parents did and our children will not live nearly as well as we live. Think of seven generations out. What do we need to do to have a high quality of life seven generations out? What do I need to do to be a good steward of this planet?
“Individual rooftop solar makes a lot of sense versus taking up a lot of land masses with solar. But I believe the converse is true with wind. The big generators make more sense than the small ones like I had. The reason includes maintenance on something mechanical. It is far better to have people trained to work on them handling the maintenance instead of a whole bunch of individuals without much experience doing repairs. I’d rather see large-scale wind generation controlled by the operators for the grid.”