Here is proof ducted fans can be driven by a light breeze. The 24″ fan started the 2 meter LIM from a dead stop with no assist. When wind tumbles over the top of a building there is a velocity gain of 180%… so a light 8mph breeze becomes a viable 14mph energy producing wind if you place a ducted fan in its path. Wait til you see it operate in a Class 2 hurricane.

At right is the base complete with brake and access for the electronics

Sustainable Business Oregon, a publication of the Portland Business Journal, does a short bit on RRW.

Rogue River Wind of Coquille, Ore. announced last week that the company acquired the rights to a novel generator design for use in a ducted fan wind turbine. The company will also license the technology for other applications.

The relativistic generator design, which is light and easily configurable, was invented by Stanley Marquiss and has been used in wind energy applications. Rogue River acquired the rights in exchange for 7 percent royalty payments to the inventor, said Mary Geddry Rogue River CEO.

As stated many times on this blog, Rogue River Wind, seeks, for a multitude of reasons including rebuilding local economies to build its products in the US. Everyone wants jobs, right? So it ought to be pretty much a slam dunk to get production manufacturing done in America or better yet, Oregon, but consider the experiences of A123 lithium-ion batteries and Amazon’s Kindle.

The answer is a story of the obstacles to a rebirth of U.S. manufacturing, and of the tantalizing possibilities if such a rebirth could be achieved. For Chiang’s company has one foot in China and the other in the U.S., reflecting the forces that drive manufacturers overseas and the potential for a renaissance at home.

The obstacles here are rooted in the sad history of manufacturing’s decline in the United States: Despite the promise of Chiang’s batteries, many on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley were incredulous when he and other leaders at A123 asked for capital to build factories in America — Asia, yes, but Michigan, why would you want to?

Even more daunting, nearly all of the world’s battery manufacturing industry is in Asia, where plants can be built faster and supplies and equipment are much easier to get than in the United States. These days, it’s hard to find Americans who even know how to build a battery factory.

Rogue River Wind is certainly learning the complexities of taking a relatively simple device albeit one requiring precise tolerances in Oregon despite the clamber for green jobs. The US has lost control of its own innovation and hence its independence as it has outsourced manufacturing to foreign countries.

The story of the Kindle and its E-Ink technology shares another sad side of what has become of Yankee ingenuity.

…More salient today as an insight into America’s standing in a globalized production system may be the backstory of another consumer electronics sensation–Amazon’s Kindle e-reader–yet here the story has a darker hue.

This I learned reading an excellent forthcoming paper by Gregory Tassey, which referenced a very troubling blog post by the Harvard Business School professor Willy Shih, entitled “The U.S. Can’t Manufacture the Kindle and That’s Problem.” What’s the problem here? Well, according to Shih, the global distribution of Amazon’s production sources for the Kindle betrays a far less benign story of out-sourcing than did the iPod and one that suggests that it does indeed matter how and where U.S. firms locate their production.

Recognizing this, the Obama administration is funding billions of dollars through programs like the USDA to rebuild manufacturing jobs in the US but it isn’t obvious how these funds help a company like Rogue River keep innovation in the US.

Slowly, we are getting all those nit picky details that come with a business to develop a website. Still trying to get all the specs and images and photos up but it is moving along at last. Am developing a blog for those interested in talking about renewable energy, distributed energy and capacitive storage technology.

Here is a preview

The Hood River Hotel has a nice April special on river view rooms and so I stayed there Monday to attend a NW Seed conference on wind power held at The Columbia Gorge Discovery Center in The Dalles. As you can see from this window shot, not only is there a view of the river but the railroad tracks and terminal as well. Unlike Coos County, the trains run in Hood River County, rather a lot, so I was a little sleep deprived for the conference.

The conference was a lot about community wind, wherein local investors or the community own the project and partake in the ongoing revenue stream, something I am well in favor of as readers of this blog know. The focus, of course, was on centralized wind production and traditional turbines, but there was plenty of information on all the incentives supporting community wind in Oregon.

Probably the best moment of the conference occurred when another Coos County citizen attending mentioned during the presentation to the ODOE, Energy Trust, USDA NW Seed representatives that Coos Bay had recently placed a moratorium on wind. Jaws dropped and there was so much guffawing, snorting and laughing that a few city councilors must have felt their ears burning. If only I had video…

Currently, the County is being wooed by Oregon Resources Corporation to sign away mineral rights on some 6,000 acres of publicly owned timberland. ORC offers to pay a royalty of 3 or 3.5% or approximately $1.5M annually at some point in the future. ORC talks about providing 70 jobs at some point in the future. ORC expects the County to upgrade a section of W Beaver Hill Road to industrial grade status at a cost of $450k.

If the County has done an economic impact analysis of entering into the mineral rights business it has yet to be provided to the public. Requests to see the return on investment to the public for the $450k road improvement and the additional costs of other county services required to maintain strip mining in Coos County, have not been answered. It appears the County is actively considering investing public resources in a risky strip mining activity without any idea if and when the public will see a return.

So I have a suggestion. Last year, I submitted an appropriation request to Congress, courageously carried to committee by Peter DeFazio, that would have helped fund a publicly owned 5MW renewable energy micro-grid that would have generated $2M in net annual revenue for local schools. It was called the Western Oregon Wind project or WOW and while as an earmark, it was not funded in appropriations the model would have created or saved 196 family wage jobs and without tearing up timber property or wearing down roads.

The WOW business model is not technology dependent. Electricity is an essential service and producing power locally even with fossil fuel power generation would earn revenue, however, given Coos County has the equivalent of billions of barrels of oil under the ground in wind resource, it would be wise to start drilling it. More importantly, even with low PUC set rates of .07KWH the ROI can be as quick as four years.

In short, Coos County could earn more money and create more jobs by importing less power than it can by privatizing our public resources and signing a deal with ORC and know when to expect a return and how much. Coos County could develop two or three or ten such microgrids and not only fund all of our schools, law enforcement, health and public services, create hundreds if not thousands of jobs and draw tourists just wanting to see how it is done.

Oregon has enough renewable energy resources, with geothermal, wind, PV and micro-hydro to generate 184% of its power needs. Read this report from Energy Self Reliant States.

Why is Coos County exerting so much effort on the handful of jobs promised by LNG and chromite mining when the real future is renewable sustainable energy? We have the resources. We have the technology, geothermal as a base line, wind, solar and CHP for peaks. The technology is affordable, typically 40% less capital cost than centralized power production and it doesn’t require $1M/mile transmission lines. We even have the financing. WOW or its equivalent earns enough to cover debt service and still net $2M annually, and never has there been more money available for renewable energy than right now. We have everything we need to be a self sustaining strong local economy it seems, except the political will.

AWEA (American Wind Energy Association) is in a snit over proposed legislation that would mandate federal tax credits be denied if a project doesn’t include products made in America.

The truth is, by law, Recovery Act grants can only be used to finance projects that are being built in the United States.

What AWEA ignores is the high number of foreign manufacturing jobs subsidized when most of the components of an American based wind farm are manufactured in China instead of the US.

Senator Charles E. Schumer (N.Y.) and three other Democratic senators have joined to propose legislation that would place limitations on the grant in lieu of tax credits for renewable energy projects under section 1603 of the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act. The concern expressed by Senator Schumer and the other sponsors is that a significant portion of the grants paid so far have gone to non-U.S. companies.

The above quote is from an email sent by the firm of Stoel Rives who go on to deny the truth of the statement above. To read more on US tax dollars subsidizing foreign manufacturing jobs, look here and then read Michael Trebilcock’s argument against industrial wind turbines.

The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported in 2008, on a dollar per MWh basis, the U.S. government subsidizes wind at $23.34 – compared to reliable energy sources: natural gas at 25 cents; coal at 44 cents; hydro at 67 cents; and nuclear at $1.59, leading to what some U.S. commentators call “a huge corporate welfare feeding frenzy.”

Presently, China is the primary supplier of generators for traditional multi-megawatt wind farms. According to Rebecca Smith in the Wall Street Journal, October 30, 2009, a proposed 600MW wind farm in Texas relying heavily on federal subsidies, grants and tax credits for funding, is expected to create 2,800 jobs with only 15% of those jobs in the US and the rest flowing to China.

Write your Senator and Representative and ask them to support the Senator Schumer’s legislation.