Marshall Price's Basement-built Wind Generator

(Page 2 of 2)

November/December 1983
By Mother Earth News staff 
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A SOUND INVESTMENT

This brings us to the all-important bottom line: Has Marshall Price's investment -of both dollars and time-been reasonably rewarded? Interestingly enough, he admits that, at first, his main objective was simply to have one wind-powered light source over his reading chair. Then, as he made improvements in his plant and added more lights, he boosted his storage capacity, as well. Eventually, seeing that the generator easily kept abreast of his power usage, he installed the inverter and then tied other appliances-including the color TV-into the line. Today, everything in his household is powered by the wind, save for the dishwasher, the washing machine, and the refrigerator . . . and the cost of operating those conveniences averages between $13 and $17 per month.

But that's not all: At one point, Marshall had installed a resistive heating element in his furnace boiler to make supplemental hot water when the battery bank was fully charged. A switch allowed him to divert power directly from the wind plant to the element-which required no regulation and thereby permitted him to make even further use of available winds, because he never had to shut his generator down. (That simple load management system, though effective, was dismantled when Price replaced his leaky boiler tank with a new model.)

In summary, Marshall Price is an example of someone who-with the help of his welding and metal-shop skills-turned several hundred dollars' worth of scrap yard parts into the equivalent of a several thousand-dollar investment... one that demands little more than an annual checkup (and a battery-recruiting effort every so many years). It doesn't take a very sharp pencil to make sense of economics like that! I guess you could say . . . the Price was right!

Marshall Price's plan, Wind Driven Electric Generator, is available on Mother's shopping page.

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