“Our dean, Doug Anderson, stresses that the faculty do research that matters,” Hartman said.
Hartman and Stafford began working together on wind power in 1995. They looked at wind power in Europe, California and China. They wanted to do something close to home and do something that would affect Utahns.
“When we started, everybody thought we were like on the fringe,” Stafford said. “We’re marketing professors, and we’re doing an area on environmental issues and everyone just kind of thought that this was a fringe topic. The Internet was hot and we were doing something different.”
Hartman and Stafford’s involvement with the Spanish Fork Wind Project began in 2003, conducting education outreach. The wind farm is the first in Utah and opened in the summer of 2008.
Wind power is a price-stable source of energy. The power plants don’t have to buy wind like they have to buy coal, Stafford said. Wind power is 100 percent green. It does not have harmful outputs like a coal plant. This makes economic sense too, Stafford said.
He said, “The future is clean energy that’s domestic, that’s price stable, that’s in our backyard. Instead of sending our money to the Middle East we can send our money to rural communities, and we can be funneling our monies there rather than abroad, which keeps our economy thriving.”
One of the billboards associated with the project read, “Wind power can fund schools.”
Wind turbines are taxed as real property, just like a house – in Utah approximately 75 percent of property tax goes to schools, Hartman said.
Hartman said, “The other great effect of using energy that is domestically produced is that we create jobs that can’t be outsourced. It can’t be sent over seas.”
Some of the issues that stand in the way of wind turbines being built are lack of policies, public acceptance and utility. One of the major problems is the way the electricity market is set up.
“One issue I think a lot of people don’t realize is that the electricity market is not a free market, it’s a regulated market,” Stafford said. “So people say, ‘Well, shouldn’t this wind farmer be able to put up the wind farm and sell it?’ Well, no. Very often there’s only one buyer that operates in that market. It’s not like opening a pizza parlor and having everybody come. It’s a very challenging market. That’s why you need to have county commissioners, legislators and utilities on board when you put something like this together.”
Hartman said, “You can think of transmission of electricity like the electricity highway. If you don’t have links connecting the transmission it’s just like you and me trying to get to Wyoming on a Utah road. Utah doesn’t go build roads in Wyoming. The states all have to work together to make our highway system work. Wind power is the same way.”
Hartman’s and Stafford’s solution is the idea of urban wind.
“When you stop and think about what the real pressing issues are that everyone talks about today, they’re things like the war, national security, energy, economics and health,” Hartman said. “Really, electricity and wind energy are tied to all of those because it’s an economically viable source of energy that is replenished everyday. It creates jobs, it’s nonpolluting and there is no water used.”
Hartman said a lot of people don’t realize just how much water is used to generate electricity from coal and nuclear sources. Hartman said coal plants use about 300-500 gallons of water to generate one megawatt of electricity. Utah is the second driest state so residents need to conserve all the water they can and wind power can help them do that, Hartman said.
Hartman said, “A lot of people are saying that water is the new oil. There are substitutes for oil, but there are no substitutes for water.”
Both professors have testified in front of legislators about their study and they continue speak at seminars educating people about wind power. The professors are featured in a Spanish Fork Wind Project documentary, which has yet to make its debut. The film will highlight the idea of urban wind. Several networks have shown interest in airing the documentary.
“We never thought when we started working in this area that we would be electricity geeks,” Hartman said.
–mikayla.rich@aggiemail.usu.edu