The wind turbines here are placed in some very "wind generous" areas!!!! The one's my friend has over in Minnesota I believe cost him like $100K to get up and running, no idea what the capacity is but it's enough to supply his electrical needs... Sure he does his own maintenance, everything on a farm requires maintenance!!!! Rural electricity around here is very high, when I was on the farm, no milking barn or anything else very "energy intensive" my electric bill ran about $250.00 a month, during harvest with a couple of corn dryers running you can double that.... With his dairy operation going 20 hours a day, and 4 or 5 grain dryers, plus the normal shop and other buildings along with two houses, I'd guess his electric bill was in the $750 to $1,000 range per month. Wind turbines are not limited to the $250K+ per units that the government puts up, they come in many shapes and sizes!!!! My friend is no dummy, if it didn't make financial sense he wouldn't be doing it!!!! There is a large (about 50 wind turbines) in the SW corner of Minnesota along hyw 23.... On an average day they do fine, on the windier days they have to shut about half of them off because the existing grid doesn't have the capacity to take it all in!!!

Steve, our oil around here is limited, we actually on top of a huge aquifer. The oil is 300 or so miles northwest of here, some pumps, but mostly the shale oil that is the rage now!

I do agree that alternative energy usage needs to be researched!!! Renewable resources, especially!!!! Around here everyone has complained about the constant wind for years, good to see it being put to use!!! I'm certainly no "tree huggin' greenie", but I do think we need to do something about energy use besides constantly dumping money into oil!!! And, I've been in some of the areas where the shale oil is being produced, not really crazy about seeing the ground torn to pieces and there seems to be a bad side to it, also..... Again, like politics, the flippin' extremists from both sides put out so much bs that I just tend to not believe any of it!!!!!