The Domestic Wind Turbine Farm
Mr. O’Neill has lived on Ravensbrook Lane since it was just a little path running creekside through mighty oaks, now endangered species—both the tress and Mr. O’Neill. At the top of the hill, where the path opens into lush green meadowland, commanding a view of the Pacific Ocean twenty-five miles due west, Mr. O’Neill raises sheep and goats for fun while he turns handsome profit from his domestic wind turbines.
One of southern California’s first “commercial” wind farmers, Mr. O’Neill “planted his crop” of high-capacity high-tech domestic wind turbines “way-way back in the day, when hippies imagined marijuana would become a legitimate cash crop and the Kumeyay Nation had no idea about tribal gaming.” In other words, Mr. O’Neill has worked his wind farm since about 1970, powering his own home and seven others up and down Ravensbrook Lane, all of which he built for his children and their families. Of course, Mr. O’Neill’s domestic wind turbines power the rest of his small town, too. With each new home that springs up in the area, the connection lines run just a little further, and Mr. O’Neill still has electric power to spare.
Investing his life’s savings and putting up the family’s eighty acres as collateral, Mr. O’Neill went “all-in” with his wager on wind farming’s future. Mr. O’Neill spared no expense, going right to the top of the line, installing fifteen too-big-for-domestic wind turbines, each of which swept more than fifty square yards and therefore produced up to 1000 kilowatts per hour. “Yup,” Mr. O’Neill smiles, “when them generators first was hooked-up, I produced as much electricity in a hour as the whole town used in a day.” Shaking his head as if in sadness but chuckling into his billowing beard, Mr. O’Neill observes, “Jus’ a darn shame took ‘em so long to get caught-up with my little farm’s yield.”
Until recently, Mr. O’Neill’s domestic wind turbines produced more power than he could use or store. Mr. O’Neill had to apply the brakes or shut down his megawatt wind machines, because the local utility had no efficient, economical way of connecting Mr. O’Neill’s domestic wind turbines to the grid. If the farm cannot buy electric power, it cannot sell electric power either. The same difficulties that discouraged Mr. O’Neill from hooking-up commercial power lines when he first built his home similarly discouraged him from linking to them as civilization relentlessly crept closer. Finally, late in 2008, as the power company ran huge transmission lines over the mountain peak above Ravenswood Lane, Mr. O’Neill and the company reached an agreement, and the wind farm linked to California’s power grid. Now, on any ordinary day, Mr. O’Neill’s wind farm runs comfortably at about 50% of its generating capacity.
Pausing for a second, looking well beyond the end of Ravenswood Lane, examining a new subdivision spread across the valley at his mountain’s foot, Mr. O’Neill lets down his guard for just a split-second, revealing the full magnitude of his genius. “If them new homeowners agree to connect with my so-called ‘domestic’ wind turbines, I finally can run all them towers at their capacity all day and night.” He smiles, not unkindly but a little slyly, “Only took ‘em about forty years to catch-up with what the farm can do.”
Watching Mr. O’Neill’s ‘domestic’ wind turbines turn gently in the steady afternoon breeze, residents of Ravenswood lane call Mr. O’Neill a visionary, “a man well ahead of his time,” their personal Copernicus, Thomas Edison, “or something like that.” Mr. O’Neill himself, however, shrugs-off superlatives, concluding, “It ain’t wise to confuse common sense with genius, ‘cuz common sense is a lot harder to find.”
Tags: domestic wind turbine, electric power, electricity, energy, wind, wind farm, wind generators, wind power, windfarm
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