Environmental Engineering Reference
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positively and negatively. The Alaska State Legislature also changed,
with Republicans taking power for the first time in many years.
Based on the Danish-Alaskan technical exchange, Steve Smiley
and Frank Kohout, the Homer electrical technician, were awarded
USD 30 000 to continue the windmill work and research including
a trip to the new US government wind test centre in Boulder,
Colorado. Within two months of the elections, the national and
state funding they received was taken away. All of Carter's energy
initiatives and programs were immediately dismantled (including
the solar panels at the White House!) as soon as President Reagan
took power. This was the first of many big disappointments faced
due to the changing political winds and it seemed to prove the
understanding that “all energy choices and prices are based on
politics and policy.”
The massive growth and development in California wind
power at that time was a result of Federal and State tax incentive
policies which provided combined 50% tax credits to windmill
owners. These tax credits allowed strong planning support from
the California government and the “Standard Ofer Number Four”,
or SO4, wind power purchases of USD 0.10/kWh or more.
Americans provided the largest wind power experiment the world
had ever seen. For better or worse, the American wind industry
was built by accountants, bankers and lawyers, passing the tax
benefits to those that could best use them.
Numerous windmill designs were tested, including the
following: sails on circular tracks, vertical-axis Darrieus designs, up-
wind and downwind horizontal-axis machines, two, three and four
blades, free yaw, active yaw, mechanical and electric yaw. California
provided a real world venue for testing wind turbine concepts. The
Danish design concept proved the most reliable and there was a
time in the 1980s when roughly 90% of windmills manufactured
in Denmark were shipped to California.
While California provided a great proving ground, it also
planted the seeds for a financial and economic policy model, which
hindered steady wind development in years to come. The fifty
percent tax credits and fair-priced SO4 power purchase agreements
fuelled the emergence of wind power. However, when these policies
and prices disappeared at the hands of politicians such as Ronald
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