Mitchell County, IA- Turbines seem to be sprouting up in North Iowa faster than corn stalks.
It's hard to miss the spinning blades in North Iowa and Southern Minnesota.
Thanks to state and federal grants, farmers like Jim Koenigs are hoping to harvest some energy for their own.
"A few years ago this would not have been cost effective, but with the grant money that's available now we thought maybe there was an opportunity to make are investment in the in the turbines where you would recover your investment in a reasonable length of time," he said.
Next week he's installing two, ten kilowatt wind turbines right next to his hog barns. Eight more will follow.
Koenigs says the two turbines he's installing are enough to provide 80 percent of this hog confinement's energy needs.
"It was a very low risk way to improve our future competitiveness, and lower our costs, at that point it was an easy decision, it would pay for itself in seven to nine years and then it's free electricity, I wish all my choices were that easy," said Jim Koenigs
Federal stimulus dollars are paying for a quarter of the overall cost. The state of Iowa also provides interest free loans to cover half of all renewable energy projects.
Koenigs says the hardest part may be dealing with energy companies.
“You don't want to produce more electricity than you need, because the utilities don't want to pay you very much for it, they're just going to give you what they're forced to pay," he said.
But if the utilities won't pay for the extra power from farms the state is promising to pay one and a half cents per kilowatt.
Koenigs won't be surprised to see more popping up soon.
"If there is a part of the country where this is going to be adapted the soonest it's probably going to be up here," he said.
A wind turbine installer says the cost of putting up a ten kilowatt unit is about $40,000. The average energy savings for a turbine of that size is up to $250 a month.
