High above the grain, the wind technician services the turbines that power the plains, in one of the fastest-growing and most vertiginous trades the state has ever known.
Every turbine on the plains needs tending, and the tending falls to the wind technician — a worker who thinks nothing of climbing hundreds of feet up a steel tower to service the machine at the top. It is among the fastest-growing occupations in the country, and the plains, thick with turbines, have become a proving ground for the trade.
A Trade with a Long Ladder
The work asks a rare mix of skills: the nerve to work at height, the hands of a mechanic, the head of an electrician, and the calm to troubleshoot a balky gearbox with the whole horizon spread out below. Technical programs at the state's colleges now train young plains workers for the climb.
From the almanac's reckoning:
- Wind technician is among the fastest-growing occupations in the country.
- The job blends mechanical, electrical and at-height safety skills.
- State college programs now train technicians for the trade.
It is clean, skilled, well-paid work rooted in the very wind that once only tormented the farmer. The almanac counts the wind technician among the newest of the plains trades, and among the few whose office has a view for forty miles.
Elsewhere in the Almanac
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