HENRY CLEWS' MIRACULOUS WIND-POWERED HOMESTEAD
Bringing power to a homestead would have cost $3000 or more plus a minimum bill of $15 per month for the next five years, instead Henry Clew spent many hours during the summer setting up a complete and self-contained electrical system.
Hello! We're actually alive and well and living on (off?) the land in East Holden, Maine. We have 50 acres here that include an old orchard, a trout stream, large vegetable garden and our own 950-foot mountain. We built (mostly through last winter) a small house on the farm and moved in during the spring.
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Bringing power to our homestead would have cost $3,000 or more (we're five miles from the nearest paved road) plus a minimum bill of $15 per month for the next five years . . . so, instead, we paid $1,800 and I spent many hours this summer setting up a complete and self-contained wind-generated electrical system.
The propeller and generator are from Quirk's in Australia and—to my knowledge—ours is the first large Quirk's unit to be installed in the U.S. It's a 2,000-watt, 120-volt, low-speed, geared alternator with a 12-foot diameter full-feathering propeller mounted atop a 50-foot steel tower. Other components in the system include 20 six-volt, 180 amp-hour "house lighting" batteries with built-in charge indicators, an automatic transistorized voltage control and various rectifiers and inverters designed to yield 120 volts A.C. or D.C.
And it all seems to work! Since our system was put into operation a month ago, we've had uninterrupted power for lights, shop tools, water pump, hi-fi and—yes—even television . . . which is quite a change from candles and kerosene lamps!
We're so enthusiastic that we've formed a company to import Quirk's windplants and I'm now the official agent for the units in the northeastern states (which is all of New England and New York). Our company, Solar Wind, will eventually be expanded to produce and sell plans and kits for simpler, less expensive wind generators, solar heating units (hot water heaters) and other alternative energy devices for homesteaders and country folk.