The Wind Rush: Birthplace of American Wind Power

Look to your west and the foothills of the Tehachapi Mountains bristle with turbines — thousands of them, marching up the slopes above Oak Creek and Mojave. This is the Tehachapi Pass Wind Resource Area, otherwise known as the birthplace of wind power in North America...

The pass between the Tehachapis is a perfect example of what is known as the Venturi effect - as air rushes from the cool Pacific side or from the baking Mojave, it funnels through this gap and as it is squeezed, it accelerates. Annual winds average roughly 14 to 20 mph, and much of the pass rates among the windiest land in the country. People knew it was windy here long before turbines arrived — the Kawaiisu, who call themselves Nuwä ("the People"), have lived in and around these mountains for some two thousand years, and the name "Tehachapi" comes from their language.

The "wind rush" we spoke of earlier began in 1981. The federal Public Utility Regulatory Policies Act of 1978 made utilities seek alternate sources of power and tax incentives provided by the state of California made the venture profitable on paper. So developers like the Zond Corporation and Oak Creek Energy Systems located and raised the first wind machines in the early 1980s not very tall by today's standards, only around 50 feet and they were not very efficient at generating electricity when compared to modern equipment. But we learn to walk before we run and they proved the concept and learned from their rough start.

The first American-made turbines proved troublesome and had to be replaced with sturdier Danish-built machines. The tax credits wore off in the mid eighties and some companies folded tent and moved on, but the survivors kept improving.

Today's turbines stand 400 to 500 feet to the blade tip and generate 1 to 3 megawatts apiece and seem to be in motion every time you drive by them in either direction.

What you see of to your west is the Alta Wind Energy Center built in 2010 and became the largest wind farm in the United States. Four decades of turbine evolution and power generation spin here side by side.