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It’s your first week at college. You want to work on wind turbines, so you chose Iowa Lakes Community College’s Wind Energy and Turbine Technology program.

Basin Electric Power Cooperative - March 30, 2010

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It’s your first week at college. You want to work on wind turbines, so you chose Iowa Lakes Community College’s Wind Energy and Turbine Technology program.

You head to class on campus in Estherville. Your instructor tells you what you’ll be doing tomorrow, and it doesn’t involve a Number 2 pencil.

You’re going to climb the college’s 300-foot tall wind turbine. And then you’re going to walk around on top of it.

Doug Enger, wind energy instructor, says the assignment weeds out at least two students in the first week. “We let them climb and say, ‘Here’s the environment you will be working in.’ These are demanding jobs. You’re climbing about 300 feet before you even get to do what you’re trained to do. So, physically, it is a little exerting.”

It’s the kind of experience Iowa Lakes Community College leadership hopes will make the school among the first to be given a “Seal of Approval” from the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA). The board of directors at AWEA approved a Wind Turbine Service Technician Core Skill Set that was developed by AWEA’s members, including representatives from Iowa Lakes Community College. The skill set represents specific criteria that have been deemed important for a wind technician to possess. Caitlin Chase, an education consultant at AWEA, says the Seal of Approval would be granted to a school if the program meets these criteria.

Job opportunities in wind

Moeller says students are coming to the college from across the country. “We get students who have come to us with master’s degrees, looking to learn about the wind industry. We have a large number of non-traditional age students, those 25 and older who are coming back and getting retrained and bettering their life for their family,” Moeller says.

Adam Literski is a second-year student at the college. He plans to transfer to the University of Iowa to earn a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering. He says one of his courses focused on the history of the industry. “I honestly don’t think the wind industry is going away anytime soon. It’s a valuable energy source and it’s fresh. Everyone wants to be environmentally friendly, and wind energy is the way to go,” Literski says.

Riley Groves, also a second-year student with plans to transfer, says his experience at the college has served him well during internships. “I worked with a guy who went to another school that is not nearly as large as Iowa Lakes. It sounds like our school is way more hands-on because we have techs who are coming back, who graduated, and telling the instructors, ‘We need this type of program, we need hydraulics, we need techs to come out with this knowledge.’ The school is growing itself as the industry is growing,” Groves says.

Management at the college say much of their success wouldn’t have been possible without help from the local electric cooperative, Iowa Lakes Electric Cooperative, a Basin Electric Class C member. The cooperative was instrumental in helping the college attain a $360,000 no-interest grant through the Office of Rural Development of the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The college used the money to fund a much-needed expansion. (video) The first semester in fall of 2004, the program had 15 students. This May, more than 55 will graduate with a twoyear wind technician degree.

Darin Moeller, executive dean of the Estherville campus of Iowa Lakes Community College, says the program has evolved with the industry. “We’re not necessarily ahead of the demand, but just trying to hold on to the tail of the demand and trying to keep up,” Moeller says.

“The real struggle that comes with that is our focus is always on quality. There’s a big difference between teaching 15 students like we did in that first term and now teaching 102 students.”

Moeller says space helps. And so does equipment. “We’ve really had to adjust how we deliver curriculum. We need to have quality training equipment. We want our students to be using exactly what they’re going to be using in the field. So it’s the expansion of facilities to handle the students as well as the equipment needed to have quality labs so they know what they’re doing once they leave us.”

A showpiece of the college’s equipment stash is a bladeless nacelle that sits just 10-feet off the ground. (The nacelle houses the gearbox and generator, and hub and blades are attached to it.) Electrical students learn to wire the nacelle, for example; mechanical students study how the blade connections are maintained.

The cooperative has played a part in equipment donations, according to Rick Olesen, vice president of operations and engineering at Iowa Lakes Electric Cooperative. “We donated a shell of a three-phase pad-mount transformer,” Olesen says. “If students are asked to approach one – every turbine has a padmount transformer at the base – they can see what it looks like, know what approach distances should be respected with what equipment, and what protective equipment should be employed.”

Beyond access to money and equipment, the cooperative has served on the college’s advisory board for six years. Olesen says the college was looking for real-world expertise from industry professionals. “It wasn’t just a state-, regional-, or nationally-based board. It was international. Sometimes even language might be an issue. But you had to see how other people felt about the industry, what their outlook was on the industry through a whole different set of eyes,” Olesen says.

Kirby Berhow manages Iowa Lakes Electric Cooperative’s wind projects. He also sits on the college’s advisory board.

A former lineman, he loves showing the students exactly what it is they’ll be working on. “Two times a year now, they bring some of the students to our facility and we go over dispatching to the actual area that we serve. We go to a substation, we discuss all the safety issues with the high-voltage part where the turbines feed into. The new students can see how the turbines actually feed into the electrical grid so it works out well,” Berhow says.

He offered insight on interconnections to the transmission grid and safety procedures from an electric cooperative perspective. “We know the tragedies that can happen when mistakes are made. If they are going to have access to the substations, we know how easily a mistake can be made that costs someone their life or limb,” Olesen says. “From that standpoint, we know how things can be organized and how safety training programs should be developed to make sure people know when and when not to approach things.”

Olesen says serving on the board was a great learning experience for him and the cooperative. In fact, the knowledge gained led to big news for Iowa Lakes Electric - two seven-turbine wind projects, called Superior and Lakota, that began commercial operation in 2009. Olesen says the wind projects serve two ethanol plants, helping ease transmission issues that come with moving wind power.

Olesen says the partnership with the college will continue to be good for the electric cooperative world in general. “There are a lot of people in the upper Midwest who are going to be directly involved in this industry, and these students are going to have a connection to Iowa Lakes Community College and indirectly to Iowa Lakes Electric Cooperative and Corn Belt Power and Basin Electric. We think that’s a good thing. We’re following through with the cooperative principle of commitment to the community. It’s more than a slogan with us,” Olesen says. (Corn Belt Power is Iowa Lakes’ generation and transmission cooperative, and a Class A member of Basin Electric. Corn Belt Power sponsors a $500 scholarship for a student entering the Wind Energy & Turbine Technology program.)

Enger says in his classroom, he feels the Iowa Lakes partnership heightens the learning done at the college. “Honestly, I don’t know how we would even go without them because we would fall behind in technology. We’d be doing a cookie cutter-type thing rather than more of a dynamic process where we’re adjusting our methods of teaching,” Enger says. “They tell us if we’re weak in an area, they’ll notice where we can become more proficient. So, boy, we’d die without them.”

Video: Iowa Lakes Electric Cooperative partners with local college

Iowa Lakes Community College’s Wind Energy & Turbine Technology program is featured in a national Duracell® commercial.
Our blog (http://basinelectric.wordpress.com) has more on that:

Basin Electric member co-op featured in Duracell ad

Star of Duracell commercial speaks about fame

Iowa Lakes Electric Cooperative partners with local college