SPIRIT LAKE, Iowa — Towering more than 12 stories above a school playground, a pair of wind turbines transform the gusts blowing over the lakes and ridges surrounding this northern Iowa town into power that provides about half the school district's electrical needs.

Students can "look right out the back door" to see the giant turbines capture the wind and learn how they produce power, superintendent Doug Latham says.

Spirit Lake is one of more than 80 schools across the U.S. that have installed some type of wind turbine, said Ian Baring-Gould, an engineer at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, Colo.

A program called Wind For Schools is aiming to bring smaller turbines to six states: Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska and South Dakota. The program, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy's Wind Powering America program at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, is the first to use smaller turbines with a mission of educating students and the community about wind power, Baring-Gould said.

In Faith, S.D., home to one of the schools hoping to build a small wind turbine, a fierce wind blows across the plains most days.

Angela King, who teaches science in grades 7 to 12 in Faith, says a turbine will give students learning about wind energy the chance to "see it happening, rather than just reading it in a book."

Much of the first year of the three-year Wind For Schools program has been spent finding schools interested in participating; South Dakota, for instance, announced over the summer that its eight school districts are in, said Steve Kolbeck, a state public utilities commissioner.

About five schools in Kansas already have the turbines, and schools in Montana, Idaho and South Dakota are preparing sites and will have wind turbines installed during this school year, Baring-Gould says.

The goal is to add wind turbines at about five schools a year in each state, for about 30 a year overall, Baring-Gould said.

The turbines are on towers up to 70 feet tall, and are expected to produce around 3,000 to 4,000 kilowatt hours a year, generally only a fraction of a school's electricity needs, Baring-Gould said.

The wind turbine will cost the school about $6,000, according to the Department of Energy.

State grants may cover some of that, the department says, and many project participants donate their time.

Curriculum guides for kindergarten through grade 12 are part of the program.

"The curriculum piece that goes with it is just as important as the hardware," says Tom Potter, the Colorado facilitator for Wind for Schools.

The curriculum is intended to help prepare future workers for the booming wind industry — an aim of the overall program, Baring-Gould says.

"It's a big growth industry, and it's going to get even bigger," says Mick Womersley, an associate professor at Unity College in Unity, Maine.

Wind energy provided less than 1 percent of U.S. electricity at the end of 2006, but is expected to provide 20 percent by 2030 if the industry's annual growth of 25 percent to 30 percent continues, according to Colorado Wind for Schools, which coordinates the program there.