Written on the Wind

A new crop of giants is coming to the Garden State. Each specimen will stand up to 350 feet tall and measure 12 feet to 18 feet in diameter at its peak. These behemoths will bear fruit for more than 20 years. While those who farm them call them wind turbines, most people know them as windmills. The

In fact, if Brent Beerley, director of business development for Community Energy in Wayne, Pennsylvania, has his way, New Jersey will boast the first coastal wind farm in North America, with five turbines turning in Atlantic City. "That's our goal," Beerley says.

Community Energy is just one of the wind power companies- coming to New Jersey. Clipper Windpower in Goleta, California, has plans to build a $25 million wind farm on Scotts Mountain in Warren County. Also eyeing the state is Atlantic Renewable Energy of Richmond, Virginia, which is studying offshore sites.

Within a few years, dozens of windmills from the Highlands Region in Warren County in the north to Cape May in the south could be cranking out scores of megawatts. "The wind business is booming," says Paul Kerlinger, a wind power consultant based in Cape May Point. "We have a desperate need for clean power and it's a viable business. We're going to see more wind power development in the state." Beerley, 25, a 1999 graduate of James Madison University in Harrisonburg, Virginia, is already a veteran of the wind industry. While still a student, he used an engineering and public policy program to work on a wind power and solar project in Malta. He subsequently managed the EnergyStar program at a manufacturing plant for Johnson & Johnson and then moved to the U.S. Department of Energy in Philadelphia where he ran a wind power assistance program.