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March 25, 2008, 10:05 AM ET
Wind Turbine Is Latest Addition to Tribal College's Sustainability Efforts
Turtle Mountain Community College, a 650-student institution on the reservation of the Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians in North Dakota, takes its commitment to sustainability seriously. The college has already installed a geothermal heating system and built a straw-bale house, and now it’s erecting a 290-foot-tall wind turbine that college officials hope will cut electric bills by 30 to 50 percent, according to The Minot Daily News.
The turbine is a model that is no longer in production, but it is expected to last 20 years and to produce 660 kilowatts of electric power at peak efficiency. The college says that the turbine blades won’t move when the wind is blowing at less than 9.2 m.p.h., but that at 33.35 m.p.h. the turbine will generate 90 percent of the power the institution uses.
Acquiring the turbine has been a seven-year project that began not long after the college moved into a new, 145,000-square-foot building on a 123-acre site. The turbine was paid for in part by a federal grant — and college officials are already seeking money to put up a second to meet the rest of the institution’s power needs.
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