Way To Go Green dot org

Posts Tagged ‘wind turbine’

A wind power and a solar power love story.

These are my friends, Mart and Cappy.  They built this lovely log cabin home by hand on top of a mountain in Upstate New York about ten years ago.  They have never been hooked up to the power grid, not ever, and have never paid an electric company power bill.

Mart and Cappy

Was it easy to do?  Well relatively so.  Has it saved them a ton of money?  Well not sure exactly, but might be near the break even point.  Those are some of the types of questions that I asked late this past summer the day I visited and took these photos.

In Cappy & Mart’s case this came about through necessity due to the site location where they decided to build their log home.  They purchased this gorgeous piece of land with a nice hardwood firewood hillside attached and where it is located on a remote hilltop, I call it a mountain; there were no neighbors and only a dirt road access off the nearest secondary road about a mile away.

Log Home

The price quote that they received from the power company was staggering to bring power poles the mile to their home site, so Cappy being a clever guy, and a local contractor, decided to do it himself.  How hard could it be?  You put up a wind turbine, no lack of wind where they are, hook up, turn on, and forget the bills, right?

Well not exactly.  They had no plan; they had no power survey, no charts and graphs or schematics.  No problem, buy a small turbine and let’s get goin’.  We do not have progress photos as the project developed, but what you see here is the latest iteration of their power plant that does the job.  This homemade system did expand over time but they do have a plan now to streamline it and put up one nice wind turbine that would look much better.

Wind turbines

They are indeed off the grid, and the contraption in their yard looks strange to visitors but they have come to love it.  They started with one small 450 watt turbine and later added two more of the same size.  They also added one small bank of photovoltaic solar panels to help keep the batteries charged up on the windless days.  They do have plans on increasing both the solar and wind energy system and perhaps in a year or two we will be able to give you an update.

So how is the life style with your own power plant?  It is as cozy as can be and they want for nothing.  They have plenty of electrical lighting, a refrigerator, television, and all the usual household appliances that anyone would have.  They cook with propane and heat with wood.  They have learned to conserve on days that the wind is low and they catch up with projects on the days that are quite breezy.

Inverter and Batteries

They do have a small gasoline powered generator for backup when Mother Nature does not provide enough free energy, but they never have gone without for any length of time.  Though they still have no neighbors yet, another hearty soul has purchased a building lot about a quarter mile away and will be building a home there also.

Generator

The photo of the wood fired boiler is how they heat both their home in winter and their domestic hot water year around.  The boiler is located outside and away from the house and the hot water runs through underground pipes to heating coils in the concrete floor of the full sized basement, and another set of coils are inside the domestic hot water heating tank.

Wood Boiler

Cappy and Mart are both full fledged volunteer firefighters and do a lot for the nearby community that they live in. Their property, though remote, is within the bounds of a town that has a college community and many very wealthy homeowners that surround a nearby lake.  The village people influence the town board and they have passed some ridiculous zoning laws restricting wind power systems, so Cappy’s wind plant expansion plans have been put on hold.

Turns out that he has decided on one turbine that would cost a few thousand dollars to replace the three small ones that do the job now, but the zoning code would require them to get a licensed state engineer to approve it and that cost would be more than the cost of the new turbine.  They are still looking at ways to make everyone happy and to get the new system installed.

All in all they are very happy living up in their little remote paradise, a small vegetable garden shown in the photo supplies nice fresh veggies in season and the largess is canned.  Note the cornfield behind is farm corn for cattle feed.

Advertisement:

Green Energy

So how about you, would you like to live off the grid?  We present below an advertisement for a product called Earth4Energy.  This is a system that could help you get started with your own self-sustaining power plant, and if you do make a purchase from this website we will receive a commission for the sale, and that will help us to bring you more free information on this website.

earth4energy advertisement

If you do decide to never pay an electric company bill again and build your own wind or solar energy system with Earth4Energy, please do let us know how it works out for you.  Our readers would love to hear your story.

One other thing that I should mention is that even though you might live where there is commercial power available, your own home could be off the grid and still feed extra or surplus power back to the power company grid and you would get paid by them instead of you having to fork over your hard earned cash for the utility bill.

Click on any of the Earth4Energy banners or links for more information.

Incoming search terms:

• company that will help you get off the grid
• build off grid cabin
• my company has never paid a energy bill who do i tell
• never paid an electric bill
• never paid energy bill
• never pay anothere electric bill
• never pay electric bill how to
• never pay electric company ever again
• off grid contraptions
• off grid non electric homestead blog

A few years ago I had the great pleasure of working at the Maple Ridge Wind Turbine Project for some Wind Power Companies that have a Joint Venture operation.

I was employed by an area Crane company to work as a Safety Inspector monitoring the setup and operation of the crane as well as OSHA safety monitoring of the contractor’s employees while working on a site-wide blade modification and repair project.

Dawn at Maple Ridge Wind Farm

The Maple Ridge Wind Power Companies Project consists of 195 wind turbines on the Tug Hill Plateau of Lewis County, just west of Lowville, New York. Each of these wind turbines generate 1.65 MW of electrical power and consist of a 262 foot tall tubular steel tower; with a 269 foot diameter rotor; and a nacelle (turbine housing) which contains the generator, the transformer, and power train. The towers have a base diameter of approximately 15 feet and a top diameter of 8 feet.

The tower is topped by the nacelle, which is approximately 9 feet high and 25 feet long, and connects with the rotor hub. The rotor consists of three 134-foot long composite blades. With a rotor blade oriented in the 12 o’clock position, each turbine has a maximum height of approximately 400 feet.

Crane Setup

This blade modification project was engineered to create tiny little differences in the way the air turbulence around the blades was changed just enough to smooth out some vibration, thereby increasing efficiency.

Crane Extended Horizontal at Ground Level

Two workers would go into the basket at ground level with all of their tools and an electrical power supply. The blade would be rotated into position from ground controls and then locked in place by a worker inside the nacelle.

Going Up !

Crane Extended to Blade Tip

Crane Extended Side View

A combination of radio communications and hand signals kept the workers in constant contact with the crane operator and ground safety personnel.

About the Tug Hill Plateau:
Tug Hill is in many respects the ideal location for New York’s largest wind energy project. This site consists of approximately 12,000 acres of hilltop pasture and feed-crop land at an average elevation of 1600-1800 feet. Tug Hill is an ancient geologic formation that lies just downwind of the eastern shore of Lake Ontario, separated from the Adirondacks to the east by the Black River Valley. At a maximum elevation of 2000 feet above sea level, the Tug Hill plateau experiences strong lake-effect weather patterns and has long been known for its exceptional wind resource

From the Top

Maple Ridge

Workers Up

Turbine Information:
Modern wind turbine generators are robust, sophisticated high-tech machines designed to convert the power of the wind into electricity.
Main Components: The tower, the nacelle (machine house atop the tower), and the rotor
Height of Flat Rock Wind Turbine Towers: 260 feet
Rotor Blade Length: 130 feet
Rotor Blade Speed: 14 RPM (revolutions per minute)

One of the tasks for this project was to raise two workers up in a man basket to reach to tip of the blade, and then an area was sanded and special anti-vibration strips of airfoil plastic were attached with special adhesives. Each of the 565 blades were modified as well as other field service repairs during this project.

Detail of Strip

Note the man in the distance up on top of the neighboring nacelle.

Looking Down

Note that one of those heavy duty service trucks would easily fit inside one of the nacelles on top of the tower. All of the photographs from the ground were taken by me as well as several of the ones from up on top were taken by me. It was not my job to go up, but who could resist such a fabulous opportunity in life? Better than any amusement park ride and I am glad I did it.

How Electricity Leaves the Turbine, Bringing Us Wind Power for Homes:
Electricity from each 1.65 MW wind turbine generator is fed through numerous 34.5-kilovolt power underground cables that come together at the wind farm substation near Rector Road. These cables channel the electricity via a step-up transformer and dedicated ten-mile power line into the New York electricity grid at the 230-kilovolt Niagara Mohawk Adirondack line, feeding power to towns and cities across New York’s North Country and beyond. Sophisticated computer control systems run constantly to ensure that the machines are operating efficiently and safely.

Pollution Offset:
The American Wind Energy Association estimates that 1 MW of wind generation capacity is the equivalent of 1 square mile of new forest, in terms of offsetting or displacing carbon dioxide from conventional generating sources. This makes the Maple Ridge Wind Farm Project equal to approximately 321 square miles of forest CO2 displacement. The many Wind Power Companies in the North East are truly helping to bring us Wind Power for Homes.

When you consider that an average household power use in 24 hours is about 2 kilowatts, this wind farm is equivalent to powering 160,000 homes. I like to think of it in this way, every time those blades are turning around, we are that much less dependent upon foreign oil price gouging.

Power Distribution to the People:
To the large amount of people that protest the power distribution of these type projects, I say, suck it up. It is for the greater good. Power lines running through or near your property are just a fact of life. Get over it. We need every type of alternate energy that we are able to harness. Do your part.

Incoming search terms:

• maple ridge wind farm lowville ny
• lewis county ny windmills
• lowville ny wind farm
• windmills in lewis county ny
• maple rigid windmill farm
• how many windmills are on tug hill in lewis county ny
• tug hill plateau
• vestas installation
• city cranes baskets
• lewis county wind farm