Articles by
Paul Gipe
Greenwashing & Wind Energy: What is it and Who Does it
By
Paul Gipe
Recently I was approached about an article I’d written in 2013 where I accused The Nature Conservancy of greenwashing. (See ... Read more
It works! GM NACS Adapter Enables Bolt Supercharging
By
Paul Gipe
Got my “official” GM NACS to CCS1 adapter yesterday and made a test run this morning. It works. The experience ... Read more
Another French War Time EV: CGE’s Tudor Electrique
By
Paul Gipe
From 1942-1944 during the Nazi occupation of France, the Compagnie Générale d’Électricité or CGE (no, it’s not that General Electric) ... Read more
More on French War Time EVs: Peugeot’s VLV
By
Paul Gipe
Earlier in 2024 I came across an obscure reference to the French fortified village of Cacassonne looking for wind turbines ... Read more
More Fast Charging on US Hwy 395 on the East Side of the Sierra Nevada
By
Paul Gipe
In California, the Fort Independence Indian Community (Fort Independence Travel Plaza & Winnedumah Winns Casino, Indian Community of Paiute Indians) ... Read more
Kragten Design Wind Turbines Now Open Source
By
Paul Gipe
Adriaan Kragten contacted me that he’s retiring from his wind turbine design work and has made his designs publicly available. ... Read more
Failed Dream: the Bearingless Wind Turbine Rotor of the Late 1970s
By
Paul Gipe
On paper the composite bearingless rotor seemed too good to be true: a wind turbine rotor that enabled the blades to change pitch without bearings in the hub. And the wind turbine would passively use aerodynamic forces to orient the rotor downwind of the tower. It was the height of simplicity and would be cheap to build. What could go wrong? The short answer: everything. Eventually the nearly 400 wind turbines using the concept in California during the Great California Wind Rush of the early to mid 1980s were scraped off the face of the earth for scrap. And therein lays a sprawling tale.
UTRC, Windtech, Dynergy, & Composite Bearingless Rotor Timeline
By
Paul Gipe
For details on development of the Composite Bearingless Rotor and its derivatives see my accompanying article Failed Dream: the Bearingless ... Read more
NREL’s Wild West of Wind: a Glimpse of California’s Past
By
Paul Gipe
While interviewing Brian Smith about his early career during the Great California Wind Rush, he mentioned that NREL had done a retrospective on the history of the lab. Specifically, he suggested I take a look at the chapter titled the Wild West of Wind.
Yee ha! Brian was right. He and Walt Musial have some great tales in that chapter. If you weren’t working in California’s wind industry then and you want a flavor of what it was like, take a look. The title is a pretty accurate summary of the times.
Capacity of 2020 Bolt with New Battery after 20,000 Miles
By
Paul Gipe
I've tracked battery degradation in the EVs we’ve driven during the past decade. The short answer is that our Nissan Leaf lost a lot, our Chevy Bolts not so much.
Since switching to the Bolts, we’ve traveled nearly 70,000 miles on three different batteries. Each battery has lost about 5% of its capacity over 20,000 to 30,000 miles. Importantly, this modest capacity loss hasn’t affected how we use the cars or how far we can drive them.
Photos of 1990s Windane Added to Site
By
Paul Gipe
While editing an article I stumbled across some photos of a Windane turbine on Pajeula Peak in the Tehachapi Pass. ... Read more
Wind power development: A historical review published
By
Paul Gipe
Another article on the history of wind turbine development has been published in the academic publication Wind Engineering, an imprint ... Read more
