RUSSELL — Craning his neck, Doug Keaton cheered as the triple turbine blades spun in the wind 60 feet above the ground at the Russell Area Technology Center.

“Go, baby, go!” he exulted. “I’m as happy as if I had a newborn child.”

Just as happy, no doubt, were his students at the center, which is the vocational education wing of Russell High School.

For the preceding few days, they’d been helping Keaton assemble and erect the turbine, which harnesses wind power to generate electricity.

The $2,500 turbine is mounted on a galvanized aluminum mast the students erected themselves, with the help of Keaton and principal Charles Parsons.

Also under Keaton’s supervision the students set up wiring that will link the turbine to a bank of storage batteries connected to the school’s electrical system. When complete, it will generate the power needed for the hall lights at the school.

It’s the first of three phases in an energy conservation project. Next year, Keaton’s students will add solar panels. The following year Keaton is planning a some sort of biomass or hydrogen fuel cell project to further supplement power supplies at the school.

The ultimate goal is to reduce utility costs by 20 to 30 percent.

Keaton has ordered a storage building for the controls and the solar panels will be mounted to it.

That should happen sometime this summer. In August, after school starts, his second-year electricity students will work on the wiring that will hook up to the lights.

By the time they installed the turbine last week, the students already had worked with wind and wind-power generators in miniature, by building and testing models in the classroom.

The benchtop windmills illustrated principles of lift and drag that are essential in designing efficient generators.

He ordered components for the turbine and students assembled it.

Getting the 75-pound turbine, which looks a little like an airplane without wings, hoisted into the air atop its mast was another engineering feat.

They did it using a winch that reeled in a rope attached to a cantilever assembly lashed to the mast at three points.

Once close to vertical, they secured it with guywires.

In the beginning, some of the students thought the project impossible. “But when you see it happening, you’re overwhelmed,” said Shaun Stephens, a junior.

Stephens said it only worked because each student had different skills to bring to the project — electricity, mechanics, drafting and so on.