Fabricating a prototype, particularly when very few off the shelf parts are used in the assembly, is always difficult and a learning process. Last fall Rogue River Wind, Ltd took delivery of a custom rotor built from a composite material that requires a fixed cure time. Anxious to deliver and believing the lay up was fully cured the manufacturer pulled the rotor off the mold a day early and it continued to cure all the way to Coos Bay from Blaine, WA losing its ‘true’.
Tolerances on the V-LIM generator are pretty tight and while we were able to correct the important interior dimensions and make the rotor work electrically it wasn’t as beautiful as we hoped for. Saturday we received our replacement rotor, this time from a carbon fiber composite blend, and what we lost in time we gained in both perfection and a 50% weight reduction.
Deadlines for completing this prototype and beginning testing are all self imposed but you can imagine after all this work my team and I are so anxious to fire it up and start exciting electrons and creating electricity here on the coast. Successfully implementing micro-grids locally has the potential to save and create jobs and turn our economy around using our plentiful renewable resources.
The PSU capstone team working with Rogue River Wind has completed their preliminary work and submitted their final proposal for all the motor control circuitry and data collection monitoring and analysis. With this final hurdle aside we expect to start capturing electrons and lighting up meters by the end of the month.
This week I will firm up travel plans to DC to work our way through the appropriations committee for a proposed 5MW micro-grid to help fund local schools. Additionally I am meeting with some federal agency officials including the Department of Energy supportive of distributed energy, locally owned micro-grids and renewable energy development. We are confident our proposed model of providing alternative funding for our beleaguered school districts will succeed here and be implemented in rural school districts everywhere.
Locally owned micro-grids have the potential to fund many public programs currently suffering massive cutbacks. For rural Americans energy independence may be even more imperative to improving quality of life and enabling economic survival than our more urban cousins.
Present transmission lines terminating on the coast are at capacity, saturated, unable to meet any increased demands. If Coos County wants to entertain the barest hint of industrial growth it must consider the necessity of providing energy to support that growth. Exporting dollars to import power is an expensive option while investing dollars to produce power can be a very lucrative long-term solution.
Harvesting wind and solar to create electrons and sell them is no different than harvesting trees and selling timber. Their may be one difference which is that according to the US Governors Association for every million dollars invested in infrastructure 40 jobs are created. Utilizing this formula the revenue generated from one 5MW micro-grid will create or save 124 jobs. It just makes economic sense to enter the energy production business on a small local scale.
Existing lines can be used but are not necessarily the ideal situation
It would seem to me you can use the existing electric line for distribution. Just have to get some one in power to agree. My have to pay rent on the line or something? To put in your own lines seems to be cost prohibitive. Maybe your system generates electrons on site, different concept.
As stated before there are hurdles but thankfully the ones you have mentioned are easily addressed and the political climate today is eager to make these projects work. The real hurdle will be finding engineers to help design and implement the system… although I have a good idea where to get them
This sounds like a highly government regulated industry. For the betterment of the children, of course. Sounds like an assignment of a grid, is a permission or permit. Then you would be competing. The regulating part is requiring a certain level of service, at a price that the producer makes a profit. The overhead becomes so great for the producer, thus the cost of the service is so high. I know little to nothing about what I am talking.
Turning a rotor, weather it be by wind or water produces some quantity of electrons. The actual production system, if a person wanted to produce there own, then supply a neighbor would entice the government to come in and regulate. The water system. Four connections, your regulated.
There goes cost increases for services, have to pay the piper.
You don’t have to respond to this. I will do reading on this subject, it may read better next time.
Thanks Cajun, we are getting pretty happy, excited, exuberant, antsy (I don’t know any bayou words you will have to fill those in for me)
You are the Bomb!