Rowland Morgan Says: "You Too, May Be Able To Sell Power To The Electric Company!"

Image Gallery Rowland Morgan's Elektro windplant ? even when turning slowly in a light breeze ? produces enough electricity to charge a bank of batteries.

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Not all electric companies nave to be cajoledinto letting their customers install windplants and Gemini Synchronous Inverters ... as the following report proves.

Three years ago, when Rowland Morgan installed a windplant (complete with Gemini Synchronous Inverter) at his Little Compton, Rhode Island home, he told officials of the Narragansett Electric Company that—because of the Gemini inverter—his wind system would actually run his electric meter backwards. The company's engineers refused to believe Rowland's claim ... and visited the Morgan home for proof. When they left, they were convinced that the wind-generator/GSI combination would—indeed—do what its owner said it would do.

Did the power company threaten to turn off Morgan's lights? Did they ask him to disconnect the Gemini inverters? Fortunately, no (although many other electric utilities around the country have been known to do such things).

In fact, not only did the Narragansett Electric Company not ask Mr. Morgan to disconnect the Gemini inverter ... they footed the bill for connecting the equipment to the utility grid (and for installing equipment to measure and record how much electricity Rowland's windplant is putting back Into the company's lines). And Narragansett Is reportedly thinking about paying the Morgan family for their surplus electricity! ("They've been very decent about the whole thing," Rowland admits. "We had to press them a bit at first ... but they came around.")

HOW THE MORGAN SYSTEM WORKS

Rowland Morgan (who is retired) and his family installed their wind power system as a family project three years ago, immediately after moving to their present home. The system itself is extremely straightforward ... it consists of three main components: [1] the windplant, [2] the battery storage area, and [3] the Gemini Synchronous Inverter.

The Morgan system's wind generator is a three-bladed Elektro unit of the type that used to be marketed by Henry Clews's Solar Wind firm. (Rowland, in fact, bought his present unit from the Clews company, but that company has since been sold to Enertech Corp., P.O. Box 420, Norwich, Vt. 05055.) in a wind of 32 knots (the turbine's maximum rated windspeed), the Elektro will develop a peak power of 6,000 watts of alternating current. Because AC electricity cannot be used to charge batteries directly, however, the alternating current coming from the wind turbine is converted to DC (direct current) electricity by diodes before it reaches Rowland Morgan's barn/shed/battery/building.

Inside the Morgan family's barn are four banks of 20 batteries ... heavy-duty storage cells that Rowland obtained from the local telephone company. "Those batteries would've cost me $60 apiece, brand new," Rowland points out. "But because they were dismantling a nearby substation, the phone company 'gave' me the six-month-old cells for a small fraction of that price." The batteries are set up so that in periods of little or no wind, the Morgan family is able to draw on them for 120-volt DC electricity.

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