Reported by Brad Penner, STATEWIDE Correspondent


[Bystander]"A magnificent thing."
[Bystander]"Hope there will be a lot more."
[Bob Gates, Enron Wind Corp.] "Wind turbines seem to hold a certain fascination for people, myself included. They're just beautiful to look at." They seem natural -- a natural part of the environment.
[Bill Maben]"My name is Bill Mayben and I'm the president and CEO of NPPD and I'll tell you what, this is something, isn't it? I'm so damn proud of what we've done, the six utilities, putting this thing together." (applause)...
The enthusiasm for wind power seems to be growing in Nebraska. The state's first commercial wind turbines near Springview are an awesome sight, but these million dollar windmills are more than a curiosity. They're producing electricity and information.
[Rich Walters, KBA Rural Power District] "The object here is to see the feasibility of having small generating plants scattered around the state or region and to see how that cost may be offset or maybe reduced to the rate payers. "
Rate payers like" Dick Herman are paying the bill for Lincoln Electric Systems wind turbine project. "
[Dick Herman] "When L.E.S. offered the possibility of individual customers participating in wind generation, if I wasn't the first one down there at L.E.S., I must have been the second then because I just leaped at it."
Herman's home is well insulated with energy efficient windows. He and his wife have long done what they can to conserve energy. When he was editorial page editor for the Lincoln Journal, he often wrote about the topic. Now he says his support of wind power is a matter of him putting his money where his mouth is.
[Herman] "I've always been interested as a newspaper man in preservation of resources because any kind of resource -- tangible resource is finite."
More than 1,000 L.E.S. customers joined Herman in committing their own cash for something they believe in.
[Terry Bundy, Lincoln Electric System CEO] "This week in Nebraska and across the nation, we're celebrating public power week and I think it's very fitting to have a groundbreaking like this because this project is a partnership between Lincoln Electric System and the customers of Lincoln Electric System."
[Curt Donaldson, Lincoln City Council]" It is very significant that L.E.S. has been able to prove there is a market for power of a little bit higher quality and a little bit higher price. This is not a feel good project. It's something that the people of the market have said they'll pay for, and I hope it's the first of many."
They broke ground in October at a site north of Lincoln. They spent the next couple of months preparing the site and construction got underway in December. They dug a hole 31 feet deep. A ring of bolts was lowered into the hole. 120 bolts, each of them 31 feet long. Concrete was powered to hold the bolts in place. A few days later the tower base was lowered onto the foundation. It took a while to get all the bolts lined up. A huge crane was used to put the remaining sections of the tower in place. By December 13th, the blades and the power-generating unit were installed and the 300-foot structure was complete. Now the turbine is turning, and Rich Kosch of L.E.S. can keep an eye on its output from his desk.
[Rich Kosch] "Basically we're going to get a lot of hands-on, real experience. It won't be something you will read about in books. It will be our actual physical observation of what happens."
There are a lot of other places in Nebraska that are windier than Lincoln but there are advantages to the Lincoln site.
[Kosch] "Because of the approach we were taking a little bit on, we felt it was important to have some visibility to our customers who were paying this extra $4.30 per month."
David Stooksbury has been studying the potential for wind energy in Nebraska since 1995.
[David Stooksbury] "In some ways people like to see their energy being made and particularly those who want it for environmental reasons. So I think what we may see here in Nebraska is that communities putting up one, three, up to ten turbines mainly for local use and I don't think we're going to see the big huge wind farms that people think of when they think of wind energy in the U.S. "
Rich Kosch says the visibility could help sell more customers on the idea of renewable energy. They expect that they'll soon have enough customers involved in the program to pay for another wind turbine. And there are great expectations for the rest of the state as well.
[Rich Kosch]"We have an incredible opportunity here and NPPD's own vision is in a few years we're going to start to see these wind turbines along the northern border up and down the border." (applause)...
Bob Gates is with Emron, the parent company of Zond Energy Systems. They made the wind turbines used at the Springview site.
[Gates] "Nebraska is a great place for wind generation actually. You could call Nebraska -- the northern plains area of Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota, sort of the Saudi Arabia of wind. There's a huge natural resource to be exploited and a little bit on the analogy of Saudi Arabia. There's way more wind energy than you need to power the local communities. It's an excellent export resource."
Markets for Nebraska's wind resource could develop as the industry changes over the next few years. Walt Bleich is an advocate for renewable energy. He expects that federal deregulation legislation will require utilities to use the wind as part of their power portfolio.
[Walt Bleich] "The portfolio standard policy simply sets a percentage level that the utilities have to meet of their electricity that would come from one of these renewable means. Then it just simply leaves it up to the utility of how they would fulfill that requirement."
Power companies that don't have the capability to use renewable resources will have to look elsewhere to get it. Bill Mayben of NPPD wants them to look to Nebraska.
[Mayben]"What I see here is opportunity. We may not be generating all of our energy needs from wind energy but I think we will be generating a lot of energy for other utilities in this part of the country to buy from us because they don't have this resource opportunity. Again, that means economic development, bringing revenues into the state for exporting energy that was produced by the wind."
[Walters] "Wind is going to be in my opinion a real strong player in the future but it cannot be relied upon because the wind goes down and the power goes off and not too many of us want to have air conditioners off in July with no wind or in the wintertime with new heat so it has to be a mix."
Efficiency and reliability have held back development of wind energy but it's becoming less expensive and more reliable.
[Gates] "You have steady winds so you have enough raw resource to work with. The technology for wind turbines today is fairly stabilized. The turbines work. Mechanically they work. Electronically with the paraelectronics and the variable speed, constant frequency, you get the power quality that you want. In terms of a reliability -- mechanical and electrical reliability, wind turbines are quite reliable today. "
[Bleich] "Wind is the cheapest of all of the renewable resources and really on a price per kilowatt basis, wind is coming in really well. It can beat everything except for combined cycle gas turbines at the present time."
It's important to remember that both wind turbine projects are experiments, experiments that could lead to lower costs.
[Kosch] "There's a theory that you will never get that technology breakthrough until you do these types of projects like we're doing here to improve upon the technology so if you can improve upon the technology, get the costs lower, you know, you're going to see some improvement to make it more competitive."
[Stooksbury] "The nice thing about the two studies, the one at Springview and the one here in Lincoln is they are truly kind of research projects to understand how well these turbines will work in Nebraska under Nebraska climate and wind conditions. While the fundamental engineering is obviously the same, there are differences in the two turbines and that will be good for us. We will be able to compare and say which one is really performing better under our conditions."
There may be more wind turbines on Nebraska's horizon, but for now, some folks in Springview want to take advantage of the two that are already there. The Turtle Butte Lodge is a refurbished hotel that aims to draw guests by hosting trail rides and other kinds of outdoor experiences.
[Mich Clapper, owner, Turtle Butte Lodge] "If they can supply some jobs and bring in some more jobs and help really develop the tourism industry, then that's what this is all about."
The twin towers outside of town may draw more visitors to Springview, more people who might eat a meal at one of the town's cafes or buy some gas or even spend the night.
[Larry Painter] "It's sure going to pull some tourists in. They're the first two in Nebraska. People are going to want to know what they look like.
It's hard to say exactly what kind of future is blowing in the wind, but Springview's village board chairman made a cautious prediction. "
[Mike Swan] "Maybe some day we will see a picture of these on our license plates. Thank you. "(applause)...

Captioning by Nebraska Captioning Center, Lincoln, Nebraska .