Windmills Sight Seeing in San Gorgonio

Learn about green energy and take a tour among Californian Deserts Turbines

There are many local attractions one can exploit in the Coachella Valley. Here are a few examples:

• A Hot-Air-Balloon flight over the desert at sunrise
• A Camel Ride through a date farm
• A Chuck Wagon Ride along the San Andreas fault
• Fly above 100 golf courses in a sailplane,
• Or take a celebrity tour to check out the homes of Barry Manilow, Hedy Lamarr or Red Skelton in Palm Springs

Alternatively, you can jump on a small bus near the Interstate 10 and admire windmills at close range for up to ninety minutes.

The wind turbine appliances can hardly be overseen and you sure have seen them already on your way to the La Quinta Resor. The massive rows of tri-blade ivory towers churning away at the San Gorgonio Pass near the exit to Palm Springs.

HOW TO REACH COACHELLA

You will find the San Gorgonio Wind Park in the Coachella Valley, 100 miles east of Los Angeles near Palm Springs. To get exactly to the windmill tour departure site, just get onto Interstate 10 east to the Indian Road exit in North Palm Springs. Then, drive one block north to 19th Avenue and turn immediately left into the car park area at 19-125 N. Indian Ave.

TOUR DETAILS

Tours run three times per day but only from Wednesday to Saturday at 9.00 a.m., 11.00 a.m. and 2.00 p.m. The morning tours are only running during the summer. The tour is ninety minutes long and, cost $25. For the elderly (65 or over) the price is $23. For children up to 12, the tour costs $10. It is advisable to make a reservation and confirm the tour times (760) 320-1365, www.thebestofthebesttours.com

WHAT YOU CAN SEE AND LEARN

There are approximately 4,500 wind turbines, accounting for eighty wind farms which are run
and maintained by companies such as Florida Power & Light, Iberdrola and. Combined, they can produce 650 megawatts of clean, pure renewable energy which is enough to handle nearly 200,000 typical California homes. The Palm Springs-based tour operation is the longest continually operating wind farm tour in the country. It is now running in its 20th year.
You can see four different generations of technology and 31 different types of wind turbines in operation. There are also some older windmills which were at some time owned by the now defunct energy giant Enron.

You will learn that you need at least a continuous 13 mph wind velocity to get a return of investment on a wind park project. In the Coachella Valley you get approximately 2,600 hours of wind per year at an average velocity of 16 to 18 mph. This is roughly seven hours per day.

Wind energy is some form of solar energy. Wind is produced when the sun beats down on the Earth and surfaces then heat up at different temperatures.

Some of the turbines are forty stories high with more than 132 metric tons of blades that can sweep across half a football field. When you seen that the stats sail right over your head, the visuals are absolutely amazing and downright impressive..

You can also see brand new solid steel which are classed as “smart” turbines because they are equipped with an anemometer that detects wind velocity and direction and then turns the turbine to the right direction to harvest as much energy as possible.

Some models you will see are named Vestas V82 and cost $3.5-million each. Alone the cost for the foundation is a staggering $100,000 investment. One requires 325 cubic yards of cement on top of 17,000 pounds of steel.

And finally the most important question: What is required to fulfill the U.S. Department of Energy’s initiative to produce 20% of the total US electricity from wind by 2030?

Here is your answer:

• 233,330 more wind turbines
• 610,000 blades
• 99 million bolts
• 1 million miles of rebar
• 1,829,997 delivery trucks

All this would create 500,000 more jobs, and will save the consumer about $128 billion driven by lower natural gas costs. Most importantly, it would cut emissions as much as taking 140 million automobiles off the road.”

Wind turbines are a familiar sight to those travelling through the San Gorgonio Pass near Palm Springs. About 4,500 of them are out there, representing 80 wind farms