In 1935 President Franklin D. Roosevelt established the Rural Electrification Administration, a New Deal agency assigned the task of bringing electricity to rural communities and farms throughout the United States.
The argument had been made that private utilities were not building power grids that reached small rural communities and farms because it wasn't profitable, and the rural areas that were being served by private electricity providers were being charged rates four times the rates paid in the large cities.
Arguments were made that the United States, in order to be competitive with Europe, needed to provide electricity to every area of the country no matter how remote. It was stated that France and Germany provided almost 90% of their rural residents with power, and the U.S. must do the same.
Of course, France and Germany combined are about 1/10th the physical size of the U.S., so those countries had a considerably easier undertaking.
After the arguments between the owners of private utilities (basic argument: The government has no business getting into business) and government representatives were settled (The answer to that argument: Okay, but we can provide loans to rural energy co-operatives that will perform the job private business won't), the REA sent crews all over the country to wire farmhouses, barns, chicken coops, outhouses, etc., to enable them to make use of the power lines that were going up everywhere.
However...there were already quite a few farms wired and already using electricity...but it wasn't electricity that they had to pay for. It was electricity generated by windmills, or more accurately, wind turbines.
Those small turbines typically generated about 15 to 20 kilowatt hours of electricity a day, not a lot but more than sufficient for the average farm. Farmers did not have a lot of appliances, and lived pretty much on nature's terms. There was no air conditioning, no freezers, refrigerators, electric stoves, television.
Radios existed, but could only be used as paperweights, as radio stations were few and far between.
The only use Farmers had for electricity was electric light, or to power small electric motors that could power a band saw or other power tools the farmers might use for construction.
And wind turbines, coupled with the Farmers friend, the Delco Battery System, provided more than enough juice for that.
That wasn't going to stop the REA however. Farmers who didn't want their homes wired by REA crews were cajoled, bribed, or virtually forced to allow it. The future was electricity, progress marches on, etc.
The fact that in order for the rural cooperatives to succeed, and succeed they must in order for the jobs promised by the New Deal to exist and the loans provided to the rural cooperatives to be repaid, then paying customers had to be signed up.
By the end of the 1930's almost 300,000 rural households were wired and now customers of rural energy cooperatives.
Let's do the math shall we? 300,000 customers at the average late '30's monthly electric bill of $2.90*...that's $870,000. The equivalent in 2012? About ten million dollars. And they were raking that in every single month.
The myth of creating economies by increasing scale in
action.
Wind turbine, solar panels, and basketball hoop - did Bill Walton move to Lakewood?
I would like to put up a wind turbine myself. There is a private residence in my community that has one in the back yard - it's one of the newer turbines, and is impressive.
I'm liking the vertical axis wind turbine models. Those take up much less space than the conventional horizontal axis wind turbines. They produce up to 10kw a day, and if anything, could power an air conditioner.
Of course, that means I'd have to research the death out of the various models, look into the permit requirements, figure out how to finance it, etc.
Who I am kidding? That's way too much work, and by the time my procrastinating ass got around to it, that portable Mr. Fusion device Doc Brown had will be sold at Wal-Mart.
The utilities won this battle a long time ago.
*That's $2.90 a month for the very same previously free 15 to 20 kilowatt hours a day.
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