All this time I thought research and development and prototype design was the hardest part (and believe me it isn’t easy), but the procedural side of launching a new product is pretty damned intense. The brain power required from conceptualization to production is not only extensive but the diversity required puts the old ‘thinking ten moves ahead’ process in a chess game to shame.

There are so many facets to consider and I am so grateful to have backers, partners, friends, lawyers, accountants and employees capable of contributing so much to this effort. This is both an exhilarating time and a critically demanding time but I love what I am doing and look forward to each 16 hour day.

These stills will be animated into some educational videos describing how the LIM works and placed on the Rogue River Wind website that is also being professionally designed.

The above is fun but there is also the nuts and bolts paperwork side, shareholder agreements, manufacturing contracts, procedural manuals and regulatory issues. Tracking regulatory changes and legislative issues like investor owned utility PG&E trying to make competition illegal.

The state wants to encourage power-company competition, green energy and lower rates with the Community Choice law.

So, how does Pacific Gas & Electric Co. respond to these threats to its monopoly?

The utility giant bankrolls a deceptive June ballot initiative that seeks to rewrite California’s constitution, kill upstarts in their tracks and block the expansion of municipal utility companies such as the one saving money for residents of Sacramento.

Considering that Congress hasn’t been able to accomplish much requiring a 60 vote filibuster proof majority rather than the old 51 votes, PG&E’s request to require two-thirds of voters to approve an alternative energy option, dooms renewable energy in California to painful and costly death. Grrrr!

Okay, back to business and the website will carry all our technical information soon and will provide an energy blog with updates just like the one above.

Image is everything, so I am told, so Rogue River Wind is working with a couple of firms up in Portland to develop our website and produce educational videos of the LIM and the wind industry in general. This will be done in stages but I invite you to take a look at what each of these firms do and you will know why I am so excited!

Last Thursday, I participated in a forum in Salem put on by the US Department of Agriculture related to economic growth in rural America.

The USDA is leading an effort nationwide to listen to Rural America’s thoughts and ideas about what is needed to create jobs and stimulate economic development in rural communities across the country. These forums follow the lead of President Obama’s December 3, 2009, national roundtable discussion. So, plan to attend and share your thoughts and ideas about job creation and economic growth.

In Oregon, the following Community Forums have been scheduled:

> ALBANY, January 21, 9AM-Noon; Linn County Fair & Expo Center, Conference Center Rooms 1 & 2
> REDMOND, January 28, 1-4PM; Central Oregon Community College, Hitchcock Auditorium

Coos County Commissioner Nikki Whitty was there along with Sandy Messerle director of the South Coast Development Council (does anyone know what, if anything, SCDC has successfully developed?).

The forum consisted of two panels, the second putting some focus on energy, hence the reason I was invited. ODOE was represented on the second panel by Bob Repine, Assistant Director, Energy Incentives who began by talking about the opportunities for jobs in Oregon relating to the wind industry. Repine noted that many parts break on big wind turbines and while, “…Oregon will never compete with Europe”, Oregon can manufacture the replacement parts and create jobs.

Oregon could manufacture the generators. The Shepherd’s Flat wind farm awarded a $1.4B contract to GE to ‘assemble’ the turbines with China being the primary manufacturer of components. Shepherd’s Flat like all big wind farms is heavily subsidized with US taxpayer money, so why are we providing jobs for China?

State Senator Chris Edwards, representing part of Lane County, also on the panel, proudly advised that Oregon can trade with China producing fine wood products and other sundries. Now that China has all the jobs, it is no wonder they can afford to import our turned bowls our trinkets.

Naturally, I saw red and leaped up to give my opinion about what the government can do to help with jobs creation, such as insisting taxpayer funded projects be manufactured in the US. Oregon has the manufacturing infrastructure and the technology in place all it appears to lack is the political will.

Neither Messerle or Whitty contributed anything to the forum conversation but when I spoke to Whitty she told me she thought everything “was so interesting”.

The first power curves for the V-LIM are done and I will publish them here after some additional verification soon. We have learned a lot from these tests, have changed the magnet topology for a more focused flux and will segment the stator for faster saturation in the production models. Even without these changes we outperform our competitors and after such a long hard struggle, I can’t tell if I am happy or just relieved to be past this point. Am definitely exhausted.

More data soon to come, here and at Rogue River Wind.

Coos County and the entire Southern Oregon Coast, without question, is an exquisitely beautiful area, so six years ago I thought this would be a wonderful place to raise my daughters. Within a year, however, some hard realities and culture shocks began to set in.

At first they weren’t so out of the ordinary, I mean everyone knows old people often have too much time on their hands and meddle in other peoples lives, it happens everywhere. The news is riddled with daily accounts of bad cops and incompetent police work around the globe, not just here. The term ‘good old boy’ system wasn’t coined in Coos County and it is no surprise the system thrives here as well as elsewhere.

Elected officials misuse public money and mistreat public employees everywhere, not just in Coos County. Crimes against women are committed everywhere, everyday, not just here. Hard economic times, poor financial planning and lousy business ethics don’t necessarily go hand in hand but they each happen everywhere not just here.

Still there is some other element, some indefinable undercurrent, some unquantifiable but nevertheless measurable resistance, some low amperage buzz always in the background, a niggling impediment to a peaceful and productive life. Coos County has a certain meanness to it. Coos County takes a strange delight in the suffering of others, schadenfreude it is called.

Not that the county and the communities that make it up aren’t changing. Long time incumbents have found themselves replaced with fresh blood, despite an electorate with a below average literacy rate. Some new blood is moving to the area and more importantly some of the old blood, the ‘good old boys’, are grudgingly relinquishing control or passing on. But old habits are hard shaken and the inevitable reaction to fight tooth and nail to maintain power manifests as a mean disregard for anyone perceived as a threat. The despicable handling of the Coos County Road Department layoffs last New Year’s Eve and the recent forced departure of Coos Bay’s city manager are two good examples.

Since moving here I have made some lifelong friendships and had some wonderful adventures but in a nutshell, Coos County is not a good place to raise bright, imaginative and highly gifted children, especially daughters. Despite recent events for which I heap strong praise on local law enforcement for speedy resolutions, Coos County is not a safe or nurturing place for women.

After witnessing the treatment of citizens and employees by local leadership across the county, it isn’t somewhere I want to do business either. In fact, whereas this area made everything harder, set up endless hurdles for me, my children even my damaged veteran son and made almost no effort to support a gift that would have provided $2M in annual revenue for the schools, my little company is now being greeted with an abundance of solid technical support, years of experience and downright goodwill and optimism. A breath of fresh air.

These last several weeks, much to the chagrin of my kids, I have been commuting daily or living in hotels while completing the V-LIM generator outside the strange cosmic influences of Coos County. With a lot of help, we have made less than concentric components concentric, we have laboriously measured and narrowed the gap between magnets and coils. We have remade parts and then remade them again and I have learned the glaring difference between an artisan, an assembly firm and a real manufacturer with years of experience.

We have designed the testing procedure and believe we have located a state of the art digitizing oscilloscope to measure flux fields, resistance, inductance, voltage, amperage and, oh yes, kilowatts output. We now are, I am now ready…

… except to post this I have to find some decent cell coverage or a good internet connection. Guess you can’t have everything.

Finally, we have the stator on the axle are balancing the rotor and shimming the magnets.

Friday, I will be speaking at the EconVergence all about decentralizing and empowering communities with local owned power generation. Noam Chomsky will be speaking that same evening, all at the First Unitarian Church in Portland. Monday we moved the LIM stator using a very substantial forklift as seen in this cell phone photo.