Ah, the bane of bloggers everywhere -- the long, unexplained absence that leaves your front page entirely post-less. Vacation travel followed by a family emergency has left us in dire straits. But fear not -- I have brought presents for you all. We've tweaked the design of the front page a little bit to make room for the most wonderful supercool thing ever -- a Wind Farm monitor for Springfield's wind power purchases.
Since our wind farm is out of town--Iowa, to be approximate--we thought it would be nice to have a little way for people in town to keep tabs on when the wind blows. Dave Heinzel did a wonderful job of taking a publicity photo from Florida Power and Light and animating it. The monitor pulls real-time weather data, with the wind speed, from the National Weather Service, and turns the blades of the turbine somewhat in-line with the speed. ("Somewhat" because the relation of turns to wind speed is just made up right now, but we hope to update it with real information from FPL one day.)
Right now, we're only buying into the Hancock County wind farm -- Osceola won't come online until late this year or early 2008. So if you ever have the hankering to check in on our little contribution to fighting climate change, drop by and see how the wind is blowing.