Wind power growing in popularity, providing economic options for rural landowners

• Tom Cooper sees more than sweet and sour cherry groves on his 240-acre farm in Ellsworth, a village of 471 people in northern Michigan's Antrim County.
• Cooper is researching the possibility of installing three wind turbines on his farm, an increasingly popular source of energy widely used in other Great Lakes states.
• At year's end, utility-scale wind installations in 30 states generated enough electricity to serve more than 1.6 million households, according to the American Wind Energy Association.
• VanderVeen in December 2001 erected Michigan's first two privately funded wind turbines near Mackinaw City.
• Exploring wind power as an alternative energy source is getting support from Michigan State University, which is providing Michigan farmers with legal and technological resources.
• Michigan lags other states already using wind turbines because it has no an alternative energy policy, said Lynn Hamilton, an visiting associate professor with MSU.
• Midland Energy LLC plans to build three 100-windmill wind farms in Huron County, which potentially could generate enough electricity to power 180,000 homes, said John Sarver, a supervisor in Michigan's energy office in the Department of Labor and Economic Growth.
• Michigan currently generates 2 percent of its power from renewable energy, although some state officials and environmental groups are pushing to increase that figure to 15 percent by 2020.
• Depending on the model -- which costs between $10,000 for a used one and $50,000 for new -- it can produce 1.5 megawatts or more of electricity.
• Cooper hopes wind turbines eventually become an alternative to farmers selling their land for development.
• "I'm not anti-development, but there's a common sense issue here where if it's scrub land, it's not worth saving," Cooper said.