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

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.

We are closing in on our pre-production prototype and I am lucky to have a great staff in operations. As part of the company goal to provide jobs for veterans three of the four members of our operations department have served their country. My VP of Operations was a Lt Commander with the Navy and managed a 7MW floating power plant and has a masters degree in systems engineering. He is well suited to implementing smart/microgrids with distributed energy sources like small wind and solar and has been instrumental in getting us from earlier prototypes to the production model.

We also have a former helicopter mechanic from the Army (you can imagine how he comes in handy with a turbine like the LIM) and a grunt from the Marine Corp (yes, my grunt). Last, but not least we just added a fourth member to operations who has had a dream of working in wind energy since he was 15. Am very proud of my staff and wanted to give them all a shout out.

As I have been writing for some time, China controls the rare earth magnet market. With the push for more wind farms and electric vehicles and China’s own growth in these industries, China may stop exporting except within a completed manufactured product.

“Countries and companies that have or plan to develop industries that need rare earth minerals to make products are concerned about China’s growing consumption, which they fear will eliminate China’s exports of rare earths,” said W. David Menzie, chief of the international minerals section at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).

China has also encouraged companies that use rare earths to locate their manufacturing facilities in China, Menzie told TechNewsDaily. But some companies fear moving because of concerns about intellectual property protection, he added.

China is fast becoming known, rightly or wrongly, as the king of IP ripoffs and few companies want to take the chance of partnering with them, especially on their own turf. Then, of course, for socially conscientious companies that want to create manufacturing jobs in the US, moving to China is not an option.

There is some pressure on Congress to provide incentives to support the mining of existing rare earth deposits in the US but the technology to process it still lies with the Chinese. Some are speculating the next resource wars will not be held over oil but rare earth metals.

Rare earth neodymium magnets are critical to the wind industry, including the V-LIM, and while there are plans to reopen Mountain Pass in California for rare earth mining, there is no ready solution in sight despite neodymium being a critical part of all weapons guidance systems and homeland security.

As one of the worst polluters on the planet, knowing the future of green energy, homeland security and the weapons and guidance systems on everytank, fighter jet and aircraft carrier relies on foreign relations with China is a bit scary.

Just in case you didn’t see it you can read it here

Mary Geddry, CEO of Coquille-based Rogue River Winds, said the ultra-efficient, low-profile, sturdy wind turbine with a built-in generator called the V-LIM, is generating interest.

She’s gearing up production. But don’t expect any local manufacturing jobs to spin out of it — at least not anytime soon.

“There just isn’t the infrastructure in Coos County at this time,” she said.

After attempts to get the V-LIM off the ground locally failed, Geddry relocated the project to Portland where a prototype was in the works, before she again relocated it to Cottage Grove where it was completed and may be manufactured.

She said some manufacturers in Alaska and the East Coast have expressed interest in producing it, as well.

Federal agencies including the DoD are under heavy pressure to meet 25% of their energy needs from renewable sources.

Driven by new government requirements that call for each military branch to purchase or generate at least 25 percent of the energy they use from renewable sources by 2025, the project is funded by a $4 million federal investment under the 2010 Defense Appropriations bill…

One factor causing concern with wind energy is the belief that traditional wind turbines interfere with radar, hence the interest in a low profile system like the V-LIM.

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.