California is the No. 3 wind state, behind Texas and Iowa. A slew of developments are in the pipeline, including in Kern County, where hundreds of turbines already dot the wind-swept ridges of the Tehachapi mountain range.
"This is going to be ground zero for alternative energy" in California, said Jim Fay, vice president of academic affairs at Cerro Coso Community College, which has five campuses in Kern County. "We have to prepare our students."
The economic crisis has dampened growth in the renewable sector. But the U.S. wind industry is clamoring for skilled technicians to maintain the 30,000 wind turbines already in the ground. The best workers combine the knowledge of a top-flight mechanic with the endurance of an alpine mountaineer.
"It's like [working on] a school bus on top of a really long pole," said Bob Ward, a marketing manager for sensing and inspection technologies for General Electric Co., one of the world's top turbine makers. "It's complex. This isn't some Jiffy Lube job."
A typical 1.5-megawatt GE unit costs $2.5 million installed. It sits about 30 stories above the ground at the hub, where its three 100-foot-long blades connect to the tower.
Just behind the hub is the housing for the gearbox, drive train and other components. Think of this as the wind technician's office. Except there's no elevator. Reaching it means climbing rung by rung on a narrow steel ladder attached to the inside of the tower. An agile worker can do it in less than 10 minutes, several times a day.
"You earn every dollar you make in this industry. It's plain hard work," said Dan Templeton, program chairman for wind energy at Texas State Technical College West Texas.
Advice to hopefuls: Quit smoking. Lose that gut. And don't try this with a hangover.
Technicians must be hyper-vigilant in an occupation that combines dizzying heights, tight spaces, high-voltage electricity and spinning metal.
Fatalities are rare but unspeakably gruesome.
Workers have plunged to their deaths, been electrocuted and been ground to a pulp by rotating machinery.
Teaching students to respect these beasts is the job of wind instructors such as Mays, who grew up on a ranch in nearby Tehachapi.
His employer, Airstreams, is a private wind-training firm working with Cerro Coso to put on the eight-week boot camp. On a recent evening, Mays lectured students on the importance of daily inspection of the safety harness, the lifeline that every wind technician straps on before climbing.
