LUBBOCK, TEXAS — Fields of wind turbines stretch for miles on the Texas plains alongside U.S. 84 on the way to Lubbock. The three-bladed behemoths stand on mesas like supplicants, armed raised, begging for wind to send them spinning.
This is wind power country. And the best place to learn about it is the American Wind Power Center in Lubbock, a museum where you can visit more than 170 windmills, many from the 1800s, ranging all the way to a modern Vestas V47 that powers the museum. (Excess power is sold to the grid; on calm days some is bought back.)
“We wouldn’t be here without windmills,” says Glenn Patton, the museum’s director of development, referring to Lubbock’s lack of surface water. The area’s first farmers had to build windmills to pull water from the ground.
Some of this museum’s windmills are positioned outside; others are in a corrugated, barnlike structure. Stroll around and you’ll find that no two are alike.
There’s a geared windmill from the late 1800s that sawed wood, ground grain and pumped water. There’s a windmill that belonged to “80 John,” John Wallace, a late 1800s highly respected black rancher in Mitchell County west of Abilene. There are tall windmills, short windmills, even windmills that have two heads of blades. The design depends on what the windmill was used for.
Out on the back patio is a huge — 34 by 172 feet — mural that Texas Tech architecture professor LaGina Fairbetter is finishing chronicling the history of windmills in Lubbock from the 1800s to present.
She’s been working on it for years, often boosted by a forklift.
The museum is an independent, privately funded one, but the idea for it came from a Texas Tech University faculty member, the late Billie Wolfe, a home economics professor who traveled the world taking pictures of windmills.
The museum opened in the late 1990s and has added windmills ever since. In addition to showcasing windmills, it offers classes on wind power.
The star of the windmill show right now is a recent acquisition sitting on a hilltop: a working model of an English post windmill used as early as 1100. It was moved here last July from Virginia, where it was built in 1978. It’s essentially a house with wind blades and a weather vane.
When winds reach 15 mph it starts to move very slowly — the entire structure, revolving around a central post — and its stone grinds the grain.
Next to it is the V47, its blades spanning 155 feet. It hums quietly as it generates power — over the course of a year, a million kilowatts, 10 times what’s required to power the museum.
Museum Executive Director Coy Harris is, as you’d expect, a wind power fan, but he’s quick to assert that these stately windmills can’t do all the work.
“These things work great,” Harris says, “when there’s wind. It’s good supplemental power, but what happens when there’s no wind?”
Helen Anders: handers@statesman.com.
