By Elizabeth Wasserman, CQ Staff

Windmills were developed centuries before the Industrial Revolution to harness nature’s airstream to automate tasks, such as grinding grain and pumping water. Once inventors established that the wind could be harnessed to create electricity, small turbines cropped up across the country. By the mid-1920s, the systems were prominent features on the rural landscape, found in use in rural areas and on farms.

Small turbines “gave farmers the ability to turn on their lights or their radios to connect with the rest of the world,” said Sandy Butterfield, chief engineer for the wind program at the U.S. National Renewable Energy Laboratory, a Department of Energy lab. But during the Great Depression, the federal government sought to stimulate depressed rural economies and extended electric transmission lines to rural areas. The turbines were quickly reassigned to help pump water in fields.

The technology has changed dramatically since those days. While homeowners or building owners can still use small turbines to generate power for their own use, large-scale turbines have gone commercial. Today, there are large “wind farms” equipped with hundreds, sometimes thousands, of large wind turbines with aerodynamic rotors that produce ever-larger shares of power on the utility grid. The Energy Information Administration forecasts that electricity generated by wind power will increase from 0.8 percent of total generation today to 2.5 percent in 20 years. In a report issued last year, the Energy Department said that it was feasible for wind resources to be producing 20 percent of the nation’s electricity in 10 years.

The problem is that wind farms are often located in remote areas that can’t easily be linked to population centers without new transmission lines. Experts say what is needed is a new system that can harness electricity from remote locations and bring it to users in high-population areas. The American Wind Energy Association and the Solar Energy Industries Association call it a “Green Power SuperHighway.”

“A robust transmission grid provides consumers with access to lower-cost electricity,” the two associations said in a report issued in February. “On a severely constrained transmission grid, as now exists in many parts of the United States, consumers are forced to rely on local power plants even though plants in other regions can produce power more efficiently and at lower cost.”

And, as with other renewable forms of energy, government policies are spurring more interest in wind. A total of 8,358 megawatts of new capacity was installed last year, helping the United States leapfrog Germany for having the largest wind energy capacity in the world, AWEA said. Interest in wind power was bolstered by Congress’ decision to pack into February’s stimulus law an extension of energy production tax credits through 2012. Wind project developers can opt to receive a 30 percent investment tax credit for facilities placed in service before 2013, as long as construction begins by the end of next year.

But there are barriers in the way of dreams to erect a superhighway of high-voltage power lines crisscrossing the country. Some residents and businesses near wind farms complain that the turbines spoil views and create noise. Wildlife groups are also concerned about the problem of certain species of birds and bats flying into the blades. And the regulatory structure of the power industry, now largely handled on a state-by-state basis, may need to be overhauled, as well.

As it stands, state regulators have jurisdiction over what transmission facilities are built and who finances them, but they often are largely concerned with delivering benefits for residents of their state, the wind and solar industry report said. The type of interstate transmission network that needs to be built gives state regulators little incentive to ask ratepayers in their state to help build such a network.

That’s a shame, say officials, who think wind power could become one of the most economically efficient ways to generate large volumes of electricity.

“If we had a stronger grid, we could pump power from wind-rich areas in the West to Chicago, St. Louis and maybe even New York,” said Butterfield of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. n