Cattleman Article

For pumping water in the Texas and Oklahoma outback, wind and sun are still your best, most economical bets

To a casual observer, Ricky Heflin looks like any other ball-capped cattleman that you’d run into at the sale barn or the coffee shop. It’s true: He is a part-time cowpoke, usually at the beckoning of his wife Amber and her father, who together run about 200-plus head of commercial cows across the wind-whipped plains of northwestern Oklahoma.

But Heflin wears a lot of other hats, too. He’s a dad to an 18-year-old daughter and owner of two lively two-year-old Border Collies. He’s a certified Professional Engineer who does custom engineering and design work out of his home. And, he’s a self-appointed and highly skilled caretaker of the 11 working windmills on his family’s ranch.

On this day, as the western afternoon sun steals into his corrugated metal shop and the tinny speaker of a transistor radio belts out country music from somewhere in the shadows, he steps over a bone pile of blades, sucker rods and cylinders to dig out a five-gallon bucket of brackets and worn babbitt bearings.

“Here’s what I wanted to show you.” He speaks quickly but kindly. He’s sharp, eager and there to help. In his hand is a passel of windmill leathers — which act as seals around the windmill’s pumping mechanism — in various stages of wear.

He’s talking about the maintenance required keep his windmills — which range in age from 40 to 70-plus years — in working order. In this corner of Oklahoma, where annual rainfall is relentlessly low, the sandy soil can’t hope to hold a pond and the power lines don’t stretch near far enough, it’s windmills that keep his cattle from getting thirsty.

He’s not alone. Across vast stretches of Texas and Oklahoma countryside, cattle drink from tanks filled with water pumped by the wind. And, like Heflin’s, many of the windmills are aging, keeping a dwindling number of windmill repairmen in business.

But here’s a news flash: Wind power — and its renewable cousin, solar power — are still the most efficient, most economical way to get very rural water out of the ground.

If you’re looking at putting in a new water system, or replacing an old one, one of the first things to consider, according to Ronnie Sauer, owner of Southwest Texas Solar Services in El Dorado, is the availability of electricity.

“If you have electricity running to your place, you’ll want to go with a (electrically powered) submersible pump,” he says. “The initial investment (for a solar or wind system) is just so high that most people are better off paying the minimum on their meter each month.”

If you don’t have electricity, the depth of your well will define the size of your water system and the size of your initial investment.

“For instance, a six-foot diameter windmill pumps to a hundred-foot depth,” says Bob Bracher, salesman for Aermotor Windmill Company, Inc., in San Angelo. Aermotor manufactures windmills up to 16 feet in diameter that will pump up to 1,000-foot depths. Depending on the depth of your well, then, an initial windmill investment can range from around $2,000 to around $10,000 (not counting the tower).

On the solar side, the depth of your well determines the size of your solar panel, and the larger the size, the higher the cost. According to Sauer, you can plan on an initial investment ranging from around $2,000 for shallower systems to around $8,000 for larger systems that can pump up to 500 feet.

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The American Windmill Celebrates Its 150^th Anniversary

When European immigrants settled on this side of the Atlantic, they brought old world windmill technology with them. Their mills consisted of four huge blades that powered more wooden components that were used mostly to grind grain into flour. But these enormous wooden monstrosities were expensive to build and required constant human attention in order to work.

It wasn’t until 1854 that a New England machinist named Daniel Halliday obtained the first American windmill patent. His self-governing design had four pivoting wooden blades that regulated the wheel’s speed, and it automatically turned to face changing wind directions, so it always worked at optimal efficiency. He sold his Halliday Standard windmills by the thousands to farmers and ranchers all across America.

In honor of Halliday’s patent, then, here is a timeline of the last 150 years of windmill history:

· 1854: Halliday designs the first commercially successful American windmill and is granted the first windmill patent. His company is based in Connecticut.

· 1863: Delays in production and shipping due to the Civil War prompt Halliday to move his company to Fox River Valley near Chicago, Illinois.

· 1867: The Reverend Leonard H. Wheeler, a missionary to the Ojibway Indians in Wisconsin, designs a “solid wheel” windmill and becomes Halliday’s first major competitor.

· 1870s: All-metal windmills are introduced.

· 1912: The Wonder Model A windmill is first sold by the Elgin Wind Power and Pump Company of Elgin, Illinois. This is the first windmill that is self-lubricating; its “oil-bath” design is regarded as perhaps the most important technological innovation in windmill history.

· 1930s: The combined impact of the Great Depression and the introduction of electricity begins the end of the windmill industry’s boom years.

· 1940s: The great scrap metal drives of Word War II mine much of windmill history from the American plains. Most of what we know about early windmills now comes from photographs and drawings.

Weather and climate also obviously play a leading role when it comes to selecting a pumping system. Since the sun doesn’t shine all the time and the wind doesn’t blow all the time, Sauer and Bracher offer several things to consider when determining if your area is right for a solar pump or a windmill.

“Since you’re using a natural resource that’s not always there,” says Sauer, in reference to the sun, “you first of all have to have some kind of a reservoir so you can store what you’ve already pumped for the times when the sun’s not shining.”

And how do you know how much sun is enough? His company uses 25-year annualized solar data to calculate what kind of production you can expect to get from a solar panel in your area. The more panels you have, the more production you’ll get—even when it’s a little cloudy.

“So if you live on the South Texas coast, where a lot of times it’s misty and cloudy, you’re not going to get the same production as if you lived in the mountains around Albuquerque, New Mexico, for instance, where it’s dry and sunny and you’re higher up, so there are fewer obstructions,” he says.

One thing to remember about solar pumps, though, is that the sun shines more in the heat of the summer, “so you’ll always be getting maximum production when it’s needed the most,” says Sauer.

If you’re looking to the wind instead of the sun for your power, how much wind is enough or too much?

“It takes a six- to eight-mile-per-hour wind minimum to keep a windmill running,” says Bracher. “At 35 miles per hour (wind speed), they furl, that is, they turn into the wind,” he says, to prevent damage.

Once you’ve determined the size of system you need and that the natural resource is adequate, placement of the system becomes an issue. For windmills, the tower should be tall enough to hold the wheel 15 feet above all surrounding obstructions, such as trees, within 400 feet of it.

For solar panels, they should be placed in full, unrestricted access to the sun. Inclement weather is normally not an issue, since most are rated to withstand 100-mile-per-hour winds and one-inch ice balls at disintegrating speed. You should plan for placement relatively close to the well — since the panel is connected by a wireline to the pump — and for some kind of fencing around the panel to keep curious livestock at bay.

One last consideration: If you’re planning to install clean, renewable power systems like a windmill or solar pump, the government offers incentives for both. The state of Texas does not require a permit for a well being drilled for a windmill—it does for all other types of wells. For solar energy systems, there’s a 10 percent tax credit for commercial operations that use them.

In addition to initial investment and set-up considerations, most folks want to know what it’s going to cost them to keep any water system running. When you’re talking about wind and solar power, the answer is simple: Not much.

Solar panels come with a 20- to 25-year warranty and are virtually maintenance-free. The pumps, on the other hand, generally carry a two-year warranty and may require service or repair.

Aermotor offers a seven-year parts and labor warranty on every windmill they sell, but not all manufacturers offer such a warranty, so check before you buy. As far as maintenance goes, Aermotor recommends that you change the oil once a year, and that you check the bolts and nuts on the mill and tower every time you change the oil.

Ricky Heflin can vouch for the low maintenance costs of his generation-old mills. “It’s so low, you’d have to have a 10-year average just get a number,” he says. Still, he stores spare parts in cobweb-lined five-gallon buckets, tends his collection of fan blades, gears, and bearings and tinkers with an inefficient pump every now and then, all to keep the livestock watered.

You can tell he enjoys the little work that the windmills demand and that his engineering mind can fix just about any hiccup they might have. Still, he’ll tell you with an apologetic grin, “There’s lots of people who forgot way more than I’ll ever know about these things.”