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by Duncan Hayse
The names of American windmill manufacturers – Star, Halladay, Dempster and Challenge, to name a few – once rang like poetry in the ears of many a farmer and rancher. But after low-priced electricity arrived at rural ranches and farms, most manufacturers stopped making windmills. By the 1940s many users of windmills had abandoned them in favor of electric or gasoline motors that allowed water to be pumped out of the ground at greater volumes.
At New Mexico State University, where windmills have been used on campus since the 1890s, fund raising is under way to create a Windpower Technology Center. College of Agriculture and Home Economics professors Carlos Rosencrans and Craig Runyan, along with university development officers Robert Peterson and Barbara Wise, hope the center will become New Mexico’s leading site for windpower education, research and public service programs.
The platoon of windmills located behind the Zuhl Collection and Alumni Visitors Center will continue to be used as instructional aids in the popular Windmill Technology Certification Workshop offered by the Agricultural and Extension Education Department. This workshop has served generations of Native Americans, students and farmers and ranchers. Initiated in 1975 by NMSU professor Mogen Rasmussen and since also taught by professors James Dean and Rosencrans, the workshop was used as a model by other educational institutions for their own windmilling courses.
Rosencrans says the new center will help meet the demand for training in wellhead protection and maintenance and repair of wind and solar water-pumping systems. Future plans, Peterson adds, include partnering with NMSU’s Southwest Technology Development Institute to develop ‘how to’ classes on small-scale wind turbines and solar energy.
“The center will be able to respond directly to the growing public interest in developing windpower and solar energy to generate on-site electricity for homes and small businesses,” Peterson says.
If the Windpower Technology Center takes flight, the group’s vision will have given NMSU more air in its sails as the university helps meet the energy and resource needs of the 21st century. It may even help the university address its own budget crunch, which has been caused partly by increasing utility costs.
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