Donald Cooksey: NASA Wind Generation Project
(Page 2 of 9)
May/June 1976
By the Mother Earth News staff
COOKSEY: The project is budgeted at $985,000.
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PLOWBOY: And where's that money coming from"
COOKSEY: Well, indirectly, from the taxpayers. But more directly from ERDA . . . the Energy Research and Development Administration. The old Atomic Energy Commission, you'll remember, was abolished on January 19, 1975 and—in its place—two new agencies were born: One is the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which concerns itself with policing the atomic industry. The other, ERDA, is actively engaged in researching and developing energy sources of all kinds.
PLOWBOY: Even wind power.
COOKSEY: Yes, even wind power.
PLOWBOY: Is this 100-kw windplant in ERDA design?
COOKSEY: No, it was engineered—with a little help from some computers—by our own NASA people at Lewis Research Center in Cleveland. We've set it up here on the Lake Erie shore near Sandusky, of course, because of the strong, steady winds that blow in and out across the lake during so much of the year.
PLOWBOY: Is the design an original one all the way through'?
COOKSEY: Oh no. Our Wind Turbine Generator—we call it the WTG, for short—is actually a composite of several other machines which exist now or which once existed. In particular, we were inspired by a Dr. Heutter in Germany. He developed a 100-kw windplant a few years ago and funded its construction himself and brought the machine right up to the point where everything started to work right . . . and then ran out of money. Unfortunately, the last we heard, Dr. Heutter wasn't in business anymore (EDITOR'S NOTE: The last we heard, Dr. Heutter's windplant tore itself apart the first time it was run in a stiff wind) but, while he was still conducting experiments, we brought him over here and picked his brain. A lot of the input for our WTG came directly from Dr. Heutter.
PLOWBOY: Marcellus Jacobs, whom we interviewed in our magazine (see MOTHER NO. 24), has designed and built and sold more windplants than anyone else in the world. He, in fact, is the unchallenged father of the modern wind-driven electrical generator and plants he constructed 30 years ago are still setting the standards for the windplants being built today. Jacobs experimented with a great number of rotor configurations for his machines and lie flatly states that three blades running out in front of a tower is the only way to go. As a matter of fact, he believes that the 1250-kw Grandpa's Knob plant in Vermont which threw a blade a few hundred hours after it was put into service back in the 40's would probably be running yet if it had had three blades out in front instead of the two-bladed downwind rotor that it was given. Yet you've designed your machine with a two-bladed downwind rotor. Why?
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