This is a 23 second video of NedWind wind turbines operating on the Whitewater Wash near Palm Springs, California in … Read more
News on Small Wind
This is a nearly 30-minute video of a Danish Wincon wind turbine running away in the San Gorgonio Pass some … Read more
This is a 33-minute video of an Enertech E44 running in overspeed in the Altamont Pass in the late 1980s. … Read more
While archiving articles I’d written for the American Wind Energy Association’s newsletter, Wind Energy Weekly, I came across this one about Fayette’s restructuring in 1990. At the time I was the west coast representative for AWEA in Tehachapi. There’s not a lot on my web site about Fayette. (I do mention them in my books and in articles on capacity factor and how this figure of merit can be so misleading.) Consequently, for historical reference I am posting the article with the original date that I submitted it to AWEA. See Fayette Reborn in Major Restructuring.
Robert Kroeger, a former Enertech sales representative, has a set of 10-foot long Gougeon blades probably for a 4 kW … Read more
In the fall of 1984 California photographer Thomas Braise filmed Fayette Manufacturing’s wind turbines in the Altamont Pass. Braise was … Read more
Sven Ruin, an engineering consultant with the family firm TEROC, has notified me that the former Swedish wind turbine manufacturer … Read more
Recently I was approached about an article I’d written in 2013 where I accused The Nature Conservancy of greenwashing. (See … Read more
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.
For details on development of the Composite Bearingless Rotor and its derivatives see my accompanying article Failed Dream: the Bearingless … Read more
