Energy From the Elements

The remnants of a windmill with its many blades long-gone still stands over an abandoned farmyard as distant sheet lightning energizes and illuminates the southwestern sky. This tall relic used a gear box near the top—driven by the wind to pump well water up a pipe and into a storage tank. A relative of this unit called a wind charger, which was higher and featured a few propeller-type blades also populated farmyards for decades, providing limited electrical use for farmers. Before the formation of the Rural Electrical Associations on the Prairies many farmsteads had such windchargers operating and some rural residents can still remember a basement full of large glass batteries holding acid to capture electricity generated for use in the house or barn during the evening, drawing on the 32 volt system. Though larger centres like Calgary, Edmonton and Lethbridge had electricity in the late 1800s most places did not. For more details, see The Provost News edition September 16. ©Provost News Photo.
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