Windmills on cellphone towers

[babraid]

There are often windmills on top of the cellphone towers (or possibly some other kind of transmitter tower) mostly Aermotor but once I saw a Dempster 12. I've been wondering about this - does anyone know how and why the decision was made to do this? Is this just a Denver-area thing, or are towers similarly decorated in your part of of the country?

The more windmills the better!

[CTXmiller]

I’d think they are working through a loophole, in that a cellphone or other tower might not be allowed, but towers for agricultural purposes are. Thus the windmill on top of a communication tower.

I’ve never seen one in Texas, but Texas generally lacks regulations needing entities to find a loophole as such.

[CTull]

I've never seen or maybe noticed anything like that in Texas either. I have seen cell towers decorated like trees when traveling in Colorado so maybe there is something to finding loop holes with the local regulations.

[Wayne]

Yeah in 2023 I saw the one at the Denver Airport. There have been others discussed here before.

[babraid]

I never even thought of that! Here I was pondering the possible sociological messages or the marketing psychology, but there might be a totally more mundane, pragmatic reason.
I've seen trees on the towers too, but lately it's been all windmills.

Also interesting to think about how this might be an unexpected and fortuitous revenue stream for Aermotor. Kinda like when Timberland boots suddenly became super popular with drug dealers. Timberland hadn't planned to go after the drug-dealer market, it just happened. They were a bit horrified, but also liked the profits. I wonder what Aermotor execs think about this, or if they care 1 way or another.

[babraid]

Turns out the Telecommunications Act of 1996 gave municipalities the power to require cell towers to blend into the landscape. And so there are cell towers that are costumed as pine trees, palm trees, saguaro cacti, etc. We got windmills