University of Texas at San Antonio graduate develops wind-powered turbine
By Adolfo Pesquera, San Antonio Express-News -- Dec. 17
Ryan Wotipka, a 23-year-old graduate of UTSA's architectural program, is bringing electrification to a little village in northern Mexico in a way that could be a model for off-grid energy use.
A few years before, Wotipka was introduced to the idea of making small-scale
wind turbines.
He applied to design a system for clean energy the Indians could easily
adapt. But to come up with his design, Wotipka went home to Schulenburg.
There are wind turbine manufacturers, but one of the novel things about wind
turbines, Wotipka learned, is that most components are available very cheaply in
salvage yards.
"You can actually build a stronger turbine out of junk than with new
materials," he said.
For supplies, Wotipka relied heavily on his uncle's junk pile. Retired
mechanic Allen Roeder was a scrap-steel pack rat.
From the pile came the parts Wotipka used to build his turbine chassis,
including a Chevy 4-by-4 drive hub. The tower came from an old radio antenna and
the rotor blade hub cover is a stainless steel salad bowl.
"He was feeding his dogs out of it," Wotipka said.
The tail and rotor blades were made from laminated wood planks.
Wotipka developed his electric-generation project working three summers as an
intern at the Lower Colorado River Authority's coal-burning plant in
Fayetteville.
He built a permanent magnet generator by gluing super-strong magnets to
discs, then winding around them a copper coil encased in Fiberglas resin using a
mold he made from plywood and a countertop.
The turbine starts generating electricity with 6 mph winds. The average speed
where it will be installed is 15 mph.
Wotipka's design earned him a $1,000 prize from the Metropolitan Partnership
for Energy and was on display Thursday at the Emissions Reduction and Energy
Leadership Summit at the Convention Center.
When Wotipka returns to the Tarahumara Indians, he intends to show them how
to build and install small-scale wind turbines made with rebuilt car alternators
so they can have electric power in their homes.
"They won't provide much power -- they'll light up a few light
bulbs," Wotipka said. "But (the Indians') electric appetite is not
nearly what ours is." Wotipka submitted a paper on his project to his
supervising professor, Sue Ann Pemberton-Haugh. He titled it "One Person's
Junk is Another Person's Source of Free Clean Power." He can be reached at
RyanWotipka@yahoo.com.
Off-grid wind power has its devotees in the United States, but most people
get their wind power from commercially operated wind farms. Wind farms are large
capital investments, and many have been developed in West Texas.
James Scott, a spokesman for Austin-based Cielo Wind Power, told summit
visitors that with natural gas costs rising, wind power would become the
economically viable alternative. Wind power is being produced at 3 cents a
kilowatt-hour, already lower than natural gas.
"And as the technology improves," Scott added, "the costs are
going down." Cielo developed and operates eight wind farms. But few of the
investors are Texas-based, he said. The company's biggest investors have been
Florida Power & Light and Shell Wind Energy.
The percentage of power Americans get from wind is still very small, but
production has been doubling every three years and by 2020, wind-generated
electricity it is expected to provide 6 percent of the nation's demand.
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