#20: A Wind Farm

Weatherford Wind Energy Center, Weatherford, OK

This is as close as we could get to the wind farm located in western Oklahoma. It is an awesome site to behold, and we spotted it from over 10 miles away! Customers of the Public Service Company of Oklahoma benefit from the power generated here. As I understand it, the wind farm operates on over 5000 acres of land, with 98 wind turbines standing. Each turbine creates enough energy to power 450 homes. That is more than 44,000 homes total. Each turbine is 262 feet tall, and each of its three blades are 122 feet long. The top portion of the turbine alone weighs over 50 tons. Interestingly, wind in western Oklahoma average 12 mph, which is 2 mph more than winds in Chicago. The experts think the turbines could withstand straight line winds of up to 200 mph, but they are designed to operate in winds of up to 56 mph. I tried to get a picture with Abby and Craig standing in front of the wind farm, but when I pulled the car over in someone's driveway to take the picture, two dogs came out to greet us. We didn't really want to risk being bitten!

A:
I have to say that the wind turbines were HUGE!!!!!!!!!! They have 3 propellers and didn't make any noise(or, well, that I could hear). I got to take most of the pics, so I got to zoom in and see them pretty well! We got pictures from a lot of different angles, so out of all the pictures I took, I bet some of them turned out really well. I think it is so fascinating that we get some of our power from the wind! The wind turbines were set up on big hills, so they got a lot of wind pushed on to them. I liked seeing the wind turbines! They were AWESOME!!!!!!!

C:
The wind farm had three little plane thingies that spin. It makes televisions word and stuff like that. There were a bunch wind turbines. They were white. I didn't hear any noise from them. They were big. They were in a field with a fence. There were dogs when we were trying to get a picture, so we stayed in the car to take the picture. The dog was running after our car when we drove off.