By: Sheila Crowley
Murray County News Staffwriter
As one drives around Murray County, there is a multitude of wind towers canvassing the landscape. The wind is an increasingly significant source of energy in Minnesota. The state’s many wind farms take advantage of the large open prairie as a source of renewable energy.
Some may look at the large towers and feel they are an eyesore, however for Sarah Schmidt, they are beautiful.
Originally from the midwest, Sarah landed a job in Sweden as an engineer for E.ON Wind Services. She was recently back in the area for a family get together and talked about her adventure in the wind tower business.
She attended high school at Mankato West when her parents, Terry and Ruth, decided to move to Katy, Texas. She finished her senior year there and then moved on to attend college at Abeline Christian. As hard as it was to leave the place she knew, Sarah acknowledges if she hadn’t moved from southwest Minnesota, she probably would not have ended up in Sweden. “That was the first step to discovering the rest of the world.” She explained her ‘big trip’ prior to the move was coming to the Chandler-Lake Wilson area to visit her grandparents, Henry and Harriet Schmidt along with Robert and Dorothy Bloemendaal.
Sarah laughs as she explained how she got involved with wind towers. “I went to school to chase tornadoes…turns out that’s not a real job unless you are a professor and I didn’t feel that I would get that far.” She discovered half-way through grad school at Iowa State she was on a path that wasn’t going to lead anywhere. Along with her meteorology degree, Sarah also obtained an engineering degree. “It’s amazing how these two degrees work really well together for the wind power industry.”
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