Many companies are slowly integrating themselves into the green technology and smart markets. From companies investing funds in smart grid initiatives to research industries releasing reports on how to conduct a green business, it seems everyone wants a sip of the renewable energy gene pool. 

One company, however, takes the cake in regards to green initiatives.

Technology manufacturer/distributer, Other World Computing, or “OWC,” announced that its on-site operations are now 100 percent wind powered. In order to make the entire on-site company powered by renewable energy, OWC switched its daily operations energy needs over to a Vestas V39-500 kW wind turbine. 

By utilizing Vestas’ wind turbine, OWC can now run its resources while conserving the company’s LEED Platinum operations datacenter on this non-polluting power source. 

The new OWC wind turbine is projected to generate an estimated 1,250,000 kW hours, or “kWh,” per year, which is more than double the current energy requirements of all OWC operations. These operations include Internet usage in the datacenter and Web hosting services. 

According to the U.S. Department of Energy, the OWC wind turbine can generate more energy in a single week than what OWC's operations require for an entire month. 

With any excess energy produced by OWC’s new wind turbine initiative, the company will sell it back to the local power provider, making OWC a net supplier of sustainable energy to the McHenry County region in Illinois. 

This idea, while completely feasible in the environmentally capable sense – is difficult for many companies who’d like to follow in OWC’s footsteps for one main reason: cost. 

According to OWC officials, the cost to install a wind turbine of OWC's caliber is typically $1.25 million with a ROI of 100 percent within 10-14 years based upon a 25 percent front-end investment and current energy costs. 

Larry O’Connor, CEO of OWC, funded the entire wind turbine project because, he said, of the conservational benefits and future cost of energy. 

“With the kilowatt hour rate in the Chicago market up 24.3% since 1999, it only makes sense to use technology to lower our usage and costs related to traditional power sources,” O’Connor said.

OWC's facility, with all of its energy saving technologies, is an ideal match for on-site wind power generation. “Our campus is designed to be vastly more efficient in resource utilization without sacrificing functionality,” O’Connor said. “As we do not use natural gas or any external fuel type for our heating needs, with the wind turbine now online, OWC has become an overall net producer of energy.”