by JAILEEN F. JIMENO

BANGUI, ILOCOS NORTE — They’re tall and white, and silhouetted against the backdrop of blue sea and green mountain, the tri-blade windmills of this remote coastal town up north can be an impressive sight. Indeed, in the last few years, people from various places flock to the base of the wind farm or to a view deck that offers a panoramic view of some of the 15 giant structures. Local and foreign tourists have taken thousands of pictures of the windmills, with many of the photos landing in personal online blogs. One such brag shot shows the windmills providing a backdrop to a smiling young lady in mid-leap, the shutter catching her off ground, arms outstretched. It is a pose that some have been seen trying to duplicate while visiting the site.

	BANGUI's windmills. [photo by Jaileen Jimeno]

But as the blades turn to face where the wind blows the strongest, one is reminded that the windmills aren’t there as whimsical adornments to the local landscape. They actually provide as much as 40 percent of the power needed by the entire province of Ilocos Norte, which has a population of 600,000.

The concept of expanding the use of alternative energy has been the battle cry of many politicians since the time of the late President Ferdinand Marcos, who was a loyal son of Ilocos. And in this era of heightened environmental consciousness and the global drive to develop and use “green” power, windmills are on top of the pile of choices. They do not cause pollution, require no fuel, do not create greenhouse gases, and produce no waste. Each kilowatt-hour produced by the Bangui wind farm is also seven centavos cheaper than fossil-fuel power. In 2006 alone, NorthWind Power Development Corporation, the Manila-based company that runs the farm, reported a P70-million annual savings passed on to consumers in the form of cheaper power rates.

Yet even today, there has been little development in this sector. The wind farm of Bangui, which began operating in 2005, is the first — and only — one of its kind in the country, as well as in Southeast Asia. There is no course on windmill technology in the Philippines. Two of the farm’s engineers had to be sent to Denmark for a three-week training to learn the mechanics of maintaining the windmills.

At least, though, it may be precisely this lack of information about windmills that motivates the curious and the picture-snappers to visit Bangui in droves. It also helps that NorthWind keeps an open-door policy for tourists who have loads of questions.

Standing 70 meters above ground and arranged in an arc spanning a total of nine kilometers straddling nine barangays, the windmills are difficult to miss, even by those who are several kilometers away. Tourists who flock to the beach initially unaware of the windmills’ presence see the structures from afar and then make it a point to include it in their itinerary.

“There are days we have as many as three groups visiting us,” says NorthWind plant manager Dino Tiatco. To the many laymen who keep on pestering them with questions, he and his staff of five are Windmills 101 teachers. Students visit the substation as part of their field trips. Participants of conventions held nearby drop by, and even balikbayans come to ogle at the windmills, take pictures, and ask questions.

WINDMILLS HAVE been around since ancient times. Historians claim it may have first come in use in what was then called Persia (modern-day Iran) as early as 500-900 A.D., mainly to grind grain or pump water. And that idea may have come from especially wise people who, a thousand years before windmills were used to grind grain, came to understand the concept of aerodynamic lift and used it in sailboats.

The windmills of today generate power by capturing the wind’s kinetic energy and converting it to electricity through the use of a generator. The northern part of the Philippines is considered a rich source of wind energy, since it is farthest from the equator, where wind is usually weak. Experts actually consult a wind atlas to determine which area has the most potential for a wind farm.

In Bangui, erecting the windmills was among the last and shortest step involved in the long process of the project. It began in 1999, when NorthWind was formed by Danish and Filipino engineers and investors. NorthWind set up meteorological towers in Bangui and collected data about wind behavior in the area. The group, led by Danish businessman Niels Jacobsen, then worked to secure loans and permits for the project. The wind farm was built under the build-operate-and-own scheme, via a $40-million loan from the Danish Development Agency (DANIDA).

Bangui’s windmills are an indicator of how small the world has become. The towers were assembled in Vietnam, the rotors in the United Kingdom, the nacelles — the part that holds the blades — in Denmark. Local workers constructed the bases.

NorthWind built two wharves to accommodate the landing of the gigantic windmill parts. But the waves of Bangui’s coastline were so rough it took NorthWind five months — from October 2004 to February 2005 — before it was finally able to offload all the equipment at the site. The project sailed smoothly from then on, as it took the company just two months to install the windmills and lay the cables connecting them to the Ilocos Norte Electric Cooperative (INEC) grid. On May 8, 2005, NorthWind began delivering power to INEC. Thus began the operation of the Bangui wind farm.

The 15 windmills are assigned numbers, with number one the closest to the substation. “We’ve thought of giving them names,” says Tiatco, “but we agreed it would cause jealousy among us boys if we start using the names of our wives or girlfriends in referring to the windmills.”

The locals have been so pleased with their windmills and point them out proudly to tourists, both local and foreign. Some enterprising minds have also begun to sell t-shirts proclaiming Bangui’s power-producing pride and joy.

“In Europe, people are tired of seeing windmills because we see them everywhere,” says a British tourist. “But here, they talk about (them) with so much pride I just have to see them.”

This dissonance in appreciation can be gleaned from the fact that Europe is one region that is most extensive in its use of windmills. It is estimated that the region has 25,000 wind farms.

The European Wind Energy Association (EWEA) reports that in 1992, the global installed capacity of wind farms was at 2,500 megawatts. It rose to 40,000 megawatts in 2003, at an annual growth rate of 30 percent. In 2006, the figure had reached 48,000 megawatts. Almost a third of this capacity was installed in Europe alone — although wind power still makes up just three percent of Europe’s energy requirement.