Construction will start within the next few weeks on a 70-foot-tall wind turbine near San Luis Obispo as part of a wind energy research center at Cal Poly.

Designed and built almost exclusively by Cal Poly students and faculty over the past three years, the 3-kilowatt turbine at a ranch on Highway 1 is half of the Cal Poly Wind Power Research Center. The center will also include a lab on the school’s main campus to work on control systems and sensors.

Patrick Lemieux, an associate professor of engineering at Cal Poly, joined the school three years ago with a background in wind research. He proposed a research center that would give graduate and undergraduate engineers hands-on experience to prepare them for jobs in wind energy, and found strong support among administrators.

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