FORT SUPPLY — A breeze kicks up more than dust in this small northwest Oklahoma town.

It can produce 150 megawatts of power cleanly, cheaply and efficiently.

The 80 towers, which are more than 300 feet tall, at the two-year-old Centennial Wind Farm may look like simple windmills, but the technology and engineering behind the majestic white turbines has changed the way power companies harness this source of power for mass consumption.

OU will soon be more heavily involved in this industry. OU and Oklahoma Gas and Electric, which operates the Centennial Wind Farm, reached an agreement to provide OU with 100 percent wind power by 2013.

To meet the demand from OU and accommodate rising interest across the state, OG&E is constructing a wind farm south of the Centennial farm that will be similar in size and operation.

How wind turbines work

The technology involved with wind turbines has vastly improved over a short period of time.

Turbines today sport features like “active blade pitch control,” which controls the angle of each of the three, 126-feet long blades to catch the maximum amount of wind or to stop them from spinning if the wind speed gets too high, said Jerod Blocker, auxiliary operator at the wind farm and OG&E plant worker.

Each of the 80 turbine’s direction, blade angle and power generation are automatically controlled by a wind vane on each turbine. If the wind changes direction, the turbine will turn to catch the wind. Turbines can also be controlled remotely, a useful feature if a wind vane breaks down.

“If there’s no wind, it’s kind of funny because they’re just positioned every other way because there’s no wind to blow that [wind vane] around,” Blocker said. “When you have a no-wind situation, it looks like they’re confused.”

In a situation like that, the turbines actually use the power they produce. At 7 miles per hour, the blades will begin to catch the wind and the ideal wind speed for the turbines is 25 miles per hour, Blocker said. At that speed, they are producing maximum power with little strain on the turbines.

Blocker said each turbine has a lifespan of 20 years, and preserving its mechanics is vital, Blocker said.

If wind speeds are sustained above 55 miles per hour, blades will flatten out, catch no wind, and stop spinning.

“It’s a wind detection system and it’ll shut itself down,” Blocker said.

Because of a growing interest in harnessing this clean, cheap energy, researchers around the world are working hard to make the industry as efficient as possible, said Britton Rife of the Oklahoma Wind Power Initiative, a joint effort between OU and Oklahoma State University in promoting wind energy.

“Wind turbine technology has improved vastly over the past decade because the industry is growing rapidly and more and more people in a wide range of fields are working on improving existing technologies and developing new ones,” Rife said. “As science and technology advance, the wind turbines become more advanced.”

Wind’s part in the picture

OG&E currently uses three sources of power to supply its grid. Sixty-two percent of its power comes from coal, 36 percent from natural gas and 2 percent from wind turbines, according to OG&E officials.

Blocker said because coal-fired plants take so long to fire up, they are rarely shut off and constantly produce power. Natural gas is used during peak times and to fill in the gaps left by wind variability.

If the wind is blowing at the wind farm, its power is being distributed down the line, Blocker said.

“What wind does is it contributes,” Blocker said. “You can’t use it as a base load because it’s too variable.”

Coal serves as the base load in Oklahoma, but wind power is used whenever conditions allow for it.

“If there’s wind, we’re using it,” Blocker said.

However, getting the energy into the power grid has been somewhat problematic.

The power generated at Centennial is transmitted through high-tension power lines that are decades old and cannot fully support all the power that will be generated in this part of the state.

“You can only send so much on the transmission lines now,” Blocker said.

But state officials are working to change that.

The Oklahoma Corporation Commission recently approved construction of a high-transmission power line to run from Woodward, a town 10 miles south of Fort Supply, to Oklahoma City. This will bring power made here and in the Panhandle to the population centers of the state.

However, even transmission lines aren’t completely effective.

“The further you send it, the more power you lose,” Blocker said.

The power lines’ loss of energy is encouraging researchers to try and develop ways to store the energy or make the lines more efficient.

“I would say that the ability to store and retain the power once it is produced is currently a setback,” Rife said. “But researchers are working to develop and improve technologies that store the power produced from wind turbines so that it can be used during times of little or no wind.”

If the boom in technology over the past decade is any indication, the technological advances will keep coming for this industry, making wind power more and more reliable.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the first part of The Daily’s three-part series on wind energy in Oklahoma. Tuesday’s story takes a look at the impact of wind energy on Oklahomans in rural parts of the state.