Residents pioneer for alternative energy, build area’s first wind turbine

Out on their Christmas tree farm in Halifax County, Jenny and Don Hochstein are pioneering alternative energy with a 70-foot-tall wind turbine.

“We’re obsessed with alternate energy and the environment,” Jenny said earlier this month. “We could have bought a hybrid car, but it costs less to do a windmill.”

Local and federal grants fund the Hochsteins’ obsession, and by tapping into money from James Madison University and using a tax credit that quietly accompanied last July’s stimulus package, the couple ended up footing just less than half of the $14,000 investment into their windmill.

And, with the money they’re expecting to save on electricity, “it would pay for itself in three years,” Jenny said.

Since it was the first wind turbine in the county and one of the first in the state, the process was new to everyone involved.

“The county was great,” Jenny said, explaining how she and her husband studied the effects of a turbine and adopted some accommodating ordinances. They ran into a few glitches with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, but they’re working those out.

Their biggest problems were technical with the installation company based out of Raleigh, N.C.

“They knew how to (put the turbine up) in theory,” Jenny said, but when it came to actually assembling the three pieces of the 70-foot turbine, it was a little trickier. After a couple of errors, the turbine was up and running by November.

Atop the turbine is a computer that controls it and makes sure it shuts down when necessary. If there’s a power outage, for example, it’s dangerous for the turbine to be feeding power to lines workers are out fixing, Jenny said.

Cost-efficient energy

The Hochsteins aren’t the only Virginians throwing money to the wind and proponents throughout the state are hoping to see more turbines pop up.

“As of today, (wind power) is the single most cost-efficient form of renewable energy available,” Patrick Wilson, operations administrator at the Virginia Wind Energy Collaborative at JMU, said, adding, “it has great environmental benefits; it doesn’t consume any water and doesn’t emit any pollutants.”

Among other wind energy outreach and research initiatives, the collaborative helped administer grants through the Virginia Small Wind Incentive Program, of which the Hochsteins were recipients.

Wilson explained how the system works: Energy producers — those residents who are generating from their turbines — contract with electricity providers and set up an anemometer, a device that measures wind speed.

When a turbine produces more power than the household is using, the meter spins backward. At the end of the month, if the turbine owner has produced more than they’ve used, the electric company will pay the retail rate for that power in the form of a credit on the next month’s bill, Wilson said. If, at the end of the year, the power-producer still has a surplus, the electric company will cut them a check for the wholesale price of the power.

Wilson said turbines vary in their power-producing capacity and price between 1 to 10 kilowatt hours and $7,000 to $55,000.

The stimulus package passed in July included a tax credit for small wind producers between January 2009 and January 2016. A wind farmer can get $4,000 or $1,000 per kilowatt capacity up to $4,000.

Their first post-turbine bill showed that the Hochsteins produced 70-kilowatt hours of electricity in November, resulting in a 9 percent savings. Jenny said they’re looking forward to the windy winter.

Investing in the future

This isn’t the Hochsteins’ first foray into environmentalism since they moved to Halifax in 1999. In 2002, they started the first recycling business in the area — collecting household recycling for the county. Jenny remains the recycling coordinator for the county.

Don drives a “grease car,” which is a retrofitted Mercedes Benz that he powers with used vegetable oil from local restaurants.

The Hochsteins are hoping theirs are just first steps, and hope that alternative energy initiatives will continue.

“Unless someone does it, nothing’s going to happen,” Jenny said. “Someone has to step out there. We decided we were going to invest in the future of alternative energy.”

For more information on wind energy technology, check out the VWEC’s Web site at http://vwec.cisat.jmu.edu

Contact Sarah Arkin at or (434) 791-7983.