Page 12 RAIN January 1978 ~ ~ /I 11, .( J . ·_ ! ~· . ./ ,I.• ---.__ SMALL GROUPS, One important characteristic of appropriate energy technologies is that they can be built cooperatively as a community effort, or by one or a number of local small businesses, providing local employment in all cases. Certainly the 2-megawatt Tvind wind-turbine, whose completion is reported on here by Prof Marshal Merriam, U.S.-Berkeley, who has done much work in wind energy, must rank high as a model for the collective efforts of other small groups and their more expensive aerospace corporation competitors. Here in the U.S., two small private firms have also built wind gernerators faster and cheaper than the government or its contractors. Just off the southern coast ofMassachusetts, the island of Cuttyhunk now receives half of its electricity from a 200kw, Americanized version of the Danish Gedser mill (Rain, April '77, p. 12-14), which cost only $280,000. Its federallyfunded equivalent, the 200kw NASA/DOE Mod OA windturbine, sitting on neighboring Block Island, R./., was given to a private utility after costing us taxpayers $2,000,000, its rotor hub alone costing $200,000! The Cuttyhunk wind-machine was manufactured by WTG Energy Systems, Inc. (Box 87, 1 La Salle St., Angola, NY 14006, phone 716/549-5544), a ten-person company, and provides 50 islanders with over 400,000 kwhlyear at 5.Jr/1 kwh. Additional information can be found in the December • 1976 Windpower Digest ($2/single copy, $6/yr., quarterly, from WPD, 54468 CR 31, Briston, IN 46507) and the September 2, 1977, Science. In the Pacific Northwest, an even smaller but no less technically proficient and innovative family firm has built a 140 kw, 72' diameter, 3-bladed, upwind-rotor, hydraulic wind generator on an 80' tower as a production prototype for follow-on 275, 600 and_J_J00 kw capacity sizes. Charles Schachle, an aeronautical en ineer, with his two sons, an . . . 1; . ·. . .. BIG WINDMILLS electrical engineer and a business/marketing manager, have developed an extraordinarily sensible system which includes: 1) inexpensive wood blades from glue-laminated beams, 2) an original airfoil similar to but more highly cambered on its lower surface than the famous Wortmann PX-series airfoils, 3) an extremely stiff tower buildable by local steel fabricators and designed to tilt up for speedy on-the-ground installation of blades, hub and power head, without large and expensive crane work, and 4) turning the entire tower hydraulically on a concrete pad rather than rotating the tower-top powerhead alone on a stationary structure (i.e. similar to 1931 Russian Yalta wind-turbine; see Power from the Wind by P. C. Putnam). The Schachle & Sons mill has been operating since May 1977 at the Moses Lake, Washington, airport, supplying power into lines of the Grant County P. U.D., and is ready for immediate mass production. First shipments on a 600 kw size can be in 90 days from receipt ofpurchase order at $400- $480 per kilowatt (uninstalled). Contact Charles Schacble, 1032 Grant St., Moses Lake, WA, phone 5091765-9696. And remember as you read about the Tvind mill costs that Boeing bas a $10,000,000 contract from the federal Dept. of Energy to design qnd build one 2.5mw windturbine for Boone, North Carolina, by 1980. Isn't it about time you asked your Congressman to get DOE to move cheaper and faster, perhaps by simply buying and installing these succulent fruits of Yankee ingenuity, small business and private enterprise? You could start by sending a copy of this article. Additional citizens' energy perspectives on American wind energy can be found in People and Energy ($10/yr. from P&E, 1757 'S' St., N. W., Washington, DC 20009), which started the first of a series of articles on aeolian power in Vol. 3, No. 5. -LJ
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