SUCCESS STORY: Michigan students join the wind economy

Editor’s Note: This is the latest in our continuing series of success stories across Michigan. We get our story ideas from participants in the Center for Michigan’s Community Conversations. Have an idea? Email us.

By Jo Mathis

 Now that the auto industry has taken a back seat in Michigan’s economy, many are counting on a redefined Michigan to play a key role in the growing wind energy industry.

Michigan’s colleges and universities are working together to produce skilled employees to fill the expected jobs.

“Students are very important to this conversation because students have a high degree of passion and interest in renewable energy and green technology,” said Arn Boezaart, interim director of Grand Valley State University’s Michigan Alternative and Renewable Energy Center (MAREC). “They’re our workforce of tomorrow.”

This fall, Kalamazoo Valley Community College’s Wind Energy Center welcomed its first students to its new Wind Turbine Technician Academy.  Sixteen students were selected from 105 applicants to become trained to install, maintain and service wind turbines. They’ll study eight hours a day, five days a week to earn a certificate in six months.

“It’s rigorous,” said Cindy Buckley, executive director of training at KVCC. 

Buckley said the students realize they may need to take jobs in states such as Texas, where wind farms are far more plentiful. But Gov. Jennifer Granholm and other state leaders believe Michigan can secure its place in the nation’s growing alternative energy industry, including wind.

“We’re in this business for a number of reasons,” Buckey said. “First of all, we think it’s a great employment opportunity in the renewable energy field for the people who are interested in doing this work, and interested in the culture of the job. But we also believe it’s a way to build the available work force that can help Michigan move forward in the projects that are on the drawing board around wind farm development.”

That would lead to an increase in construction and manufacturing jobs, she said, because it’s cost-effective for turbines to be built close to their final site location. 

“Michigan has great potential,” Buckey said, “and we’re hopeful we can be a part of that mix of resources that can help.”

The Consortium for Advanced Manufacturing of Alternative & Renewable Energy Technologies – made up of Western Michigan University; Michigan State University; Wayne State University; the University of Michigan and Michigan Technological University – centralizes research expertise related to wind product design and materials, manufacturing processes, systems and supply chain.  

And in August, eight west Michigan community colleges and two universities formed the West Michigan Community College Collaboration to train the next generation of workers for the wind turbine industry.

Grand Valley State University, which is part of that collaboration, announced it will receive a $1.4 million federal grant to launch a wind turbine testing project on Lake Michigan. By next fall, GVSU’s Muskegon-based MAREC will put a wind turbine on a floating platform to test how it works on the Great Lakes.

Boezaart said the plan is to develop an off-shore wind testing site — perhaps an offshore platform or a fixed tower — that would advance a better understanding of year-round wind conditions on Lake Michigan.

“This is something that experts and those interested in developing commercial scale off-shore wind power generating capacity have expressed great interest in,” he said, noting that the grant was obtained through the work of U.S. Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Holland.

While he doesn’t expect the alternative energy industry to ever fully replace lost jobs in the automobile industry, Boezaart said the number should certainly grow from what it is today – which he guesses is in the hundreds.

Government regulations alone should give it a boost.

Michigan’s Renewable Portfolio Standard mandates that 10 percent of Michigan’s electricity needs come from renewable sources by 2015 and 25 percent by 2025.

Wind power could provide 20 percent of U.S. electricity needs by 2030, according to a report by the U.S. Department of Energy, which noted that goal will require that today’s 2,000 annual turbine installations increase to nearly 7,000 per year by 2017.

According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), about 85,000 people are employed in the wind industry, a 70 percent increase from a year ago.