Donald Cooksey: NASA Wind Generation Project
(Page 4 of 9)
May/June 1976
By the Mother Earth News staff
PLOWBOY: I know that Lockheed custom-built your original set of blades and you're talking about testing what I assume to be more one-of-a-kind components fabricated just for this project. Have you had to construct everything you've used in this windplant?
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COOKSEY: No, we've used existing hardware as much as possible. Almost everything in the mechanical drive system—shafts, bearings, gearbox—came right off the shelf. The alternator is a stock item from General Electric and the gearbox is straight out of the Horsburgh-Scott catalog. That saved us a lot of money and, incidentally, also dictated a great deal about the specifications of the components that we did have to design for the machine.
PLOWBOY: All right. This project is budgeted at $985,000, right?
COOKSEY: Right.
PLOWBOY: And the windplant you've built and are testing for that $985,000 produces 100 kilowatts, of electricity . . . when the wind blows.
COOKSEY: That is correct.
PLOWBOY: Which means that your generator cost $9,850 per kilowatt . . . and that's a pretty penny to pay for "free" power from the wind.
COOKSEY: OK. In the first place, not all of that $985,000 actually went—or is going—directly into our Wind Turbine Generator. Nearly half the money has to be charged off to engineering, test equipment, and salaries for the people who are analyzing the machine's performance.
When you come right down to it, the actual hardware and construction of this plant can be figured at about $500,000 . . . or $5,000 per kilowatt. And we calculate that ,we can now build a second-gene ration machine for only about $2,000 per kw . . . even if we hand-fabricate the blades, hub, bedplate, and other special components that went into our prototype and which we couldn't buy off the shelf. BUT, if someone were to go into production with the WTG and actually mass-produce the plant, that cost could drop down to around $1,000 or even as low as $600 per kilowatt. Which would make the WTG competitive with diesel generators burning 30¢-a-gallon fuel.
PLOWBOY: What do you mean "if someone were to go into production with the WTG"? Are you already shooting for manufacture of the unit?
COOKSEY: Well we're still a long way from that. The machine you see here is only the first of several prototypes that we hope to develop in what is a five-year-long, I 1-million-dollar research project. We're already in the process of writing specifications for two more windplants of 200 to 300 kilowatts and we're considering the design of generators all the way up to the 1500-kw class. So we still have a lot of work ahead of us before we'll even know if we're on the right track or not.
But to answer your question more directly: Yes, the whole purpose of this project is the development of a tried-and-tested, trouble-free, wind driven generator that a company-or even an individual—can set up to manufacture. We'd like to have a whole manual full of such machines, in fact. Everything from a little 4-kilowatt model up to and past a 1500-kw plant. Then you could just thumb through the book and pick the one that best suits your application and send away and get the prints and build it. All the work we do, you know, is freely available to the public.
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