Renewables
Hutterites “farm” the wind
- Details
- Category: Alberta Renewables
- Written by Jim Bentein
Wind development becomes a cash crop on southern Alberta colonies
The world of the Hutterites, a religious sect whose members live a simple rural life, on settlements where they lack access to TV, radio, or the Internet, is becoming decidedly more 21st century these days.While modern conveniences like washing machines and dishwashers have slowly crept into the lives of Hutterite colony residents in western Canada and the western United States, for the most part, a visit to a Hutterite settlement would be like time travelling back a century.
Except for those wind turbines and solar panels.
“We’ve rented out [colony] land to TransAlta [Utilities] and they have 60 turbines there now,” says Mike Gross, secretary-manager of the 121-resident Pincher Creek Hutterite colony, about 150 kilometres southwest of Calgary. “We’ve leased out two more sections to them and they want to put up 15 or 20 more windmills.”
The first of six smaller 150-kilowatt wind turbines were erected 10 years ago, generating almost one megawatt of electricity. TransAlta more recently erected 54 larger 660-kilowatt turbines, which generated a little over 40 megawatts of power.
The 15 additional turbines, which the Calgary-based company plans to erect now that a new transmission line is being constructed by AltaLink L.P. from Lethbridge to the Pincher Creek area, would be comprised of the 1,800-kilowatt turbines that are now becoming standard. They would generate 27 megawatts, meaning that the Hutterite colony’s land would support enough wind power in total to light up a good-sized city.
However, Gross points out that the electricity from the wind project doesn’t flow directly to the colony.
"If it did, all we’d need is one turbine,” he says.
Instead it flows to the Alberta power grid.
But that certainly doesn’t mean the colony doesn’t benefit from having the turbines on its land. TransAlta pays the colony a royalty for every kilowatt produced.
“It puts the gravy on the potatoes,” Gross jokes.
Lots of gravy.
He says the colony generates “several hundred thousand dollars” a year from its newest form of farming—harvesting the wind.
The Pincher Creek colony isn’t the only one in the province to have discovered southern Alberta’s newest cash crop.
The Springpoint Hutterite colony, located 27 kilometres south of the Pincher Creek colony, has 27 1,800-kilowatt turbines on its land, also leased to a third party. The 80-resident colony also is paid a significant annual royalty.
In addition, the 82-resident Livingstone Hutterite colony, about 25 kilometres northeast, has 30 of the larger 1,800-kilowatt turbines on land it leases.
Wind power isn’t the only form of renewable energy being used by the Pincher Creek colony.
It currently uses solar panels to power an electric fence and to power a pump that delivers water from a well to cattle.
Gross says the colony at Picture Butte, also in southern Alberta, uses solar energy to heat a hog barn and his colony is also considering that option.
The Hutterites have a rich history, dating back to the 1500s, when they were formed in Germany as an Anabaptist Christian sect that opposed many of the trappings of Christianity, clung to a communal lifestyle, and that also was pacifistic and anti-statist.
Most recently some Alberta Hutterite leaders have threatened to pull out of the province if the government forces them to have their photos on driving licences.
There are three different sub-groups of Hutterites, with 498 different settlements located in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, British Columbia, the Dakotas, Minnesota, Montana, Washington State, and Oregon.
“Once a colony gets to have between 120 and 150 [residents] that’s too many and they move to another colony,” says Gross.
Formed in 1926, the Pincher Creek colony is one of the oldest in Alberta. Gross was born on the colony in 1940.
The colony owns or leases 9,400 acres of land, where it grows wheat, barley, hay, and canola and raises 600 pigs, has 450 beef cows, and also raises geese, ducks, chickens and turkeys.
“We’re a real Old MacDonald’s farm,” he says. “And now we farm the wind.”
