Author’s note: This is the first in a two-part series
“Count the windmills girls,” I remember telling my twin nieces as we entered the heart of the Sandhills along Highway 2 west of Broken Bow. The diversion only worked so long on these preschoolers though there were dozens of the pinwheel-topped towers in every direction. Sometime during that era, 15-20 years ago, on a solo trip over the same highway to Lincoln, I spied a set of solar panels in a ranch pasture. There was a weathered stock tank nearby, catching water from a galvanized pipe – no wind required!
Green energy has been a buzz word for years. Solar and wind are just a couple viable alternatives to supplanting fossil fuels to produce electricity. A dependable breeze, however, predates oil and gas use by centuries when it powered everything from ships to flour mills. Windmills brought life-giving water from the ground as Homesteaders pushed west. What has been called Nebraska’s state tree still serves ranches and farms in the Sandhills and other rural areas of the state.
Water for livestock in the area described above, mostly cattle, is drawn primarily by windmill or solar-powered pumps since it is cost prohibitive to run electric lines and, of course, a higher monthly utility bill. So, if both of the best options tap green energy sources, which is better?
For an answer I asked a man who installs and services both systems. James Girard is among the second generation at Girard’s Well Service. We sat down for a bit at his home, where the business is also based, north of Alliance. A towering white windmill throws a shadow over the front yard. A plethora of spare windmill parts and towers stretch behind the shop. James, owner for the past decade, has a four-man crew, including his dad, working for him. Also, they began recycling cardboard at Keep Alliance Beautiful last spring.
“I helped out ever since I was a little kid . . . I checked rigs every summer since I could drive for sure,” James commented, adding that among his oldest memories was when the Eldreds (a prominent ranching family) “landed their helicopter in our yard next door” and we checked their rigs. As far as the first generation, James said his dad, Ande, started working for Chuck Dunbar in Alliance – you had to be 16. Then he went to college for a while. “Chuck had a drilling rig and a lot of work was done by hand,” James said. “Dad bought his first service rig in 1981 and kept buying more of Chuck’s stuff until he retired.”
Girard’s Well Service is mostly classified as domestic and livestock wells, not irrigation. James and his crew do not work with pivot irrigation, but may drill a well for a farmer who also needs to water cattle on their land, for example. Will that farmer opt for the traditional windmill or solar panel technology?
Asked why some ranchers have switched to solar, James said, “Mostly it’s because of changing grazing methods.” A typical operation had summer and winter pastures – summer divided herds into smaller bunches so there wasn’t that extra demand on water, he explained. Because of research, grazing is more intentional, James noted, citing the work of Allan Savory who developed a holistic management theory. “He believes in large groups taking grass to a certain level then moving to a different pasture,” James said. The number of cow pies and how the hooves aerate the soil is also deemed beneficial. This method also means more cattle in a pasture at a time. Planning for water, James said a cow/calf pair drinks 50 gallons of water a day. “A windmill with a big pumping cylinder can’t keep up,” he said.
Contrasting capacity, solar can do 40+ gallons of water a minute for six hours. An average Sandhills solar-powered pump yields 6,000-12,000 gallons a day, he said. “Sun in Nebraska is double energy of the wind.”