"Tilting at Windmills"

Article from February 25, 2010 issue

By Price Hutchins
Special to The News

We were pretty content in our little world in Lovell. We had a farmhouse that leaked heated air into the village, a hot tub, all the appliances, four vehicles and a boat. At night, when the lights were all out I could see scores of little glowing lights surrounding us telling us our necessary electronics were charging or ready in an instant. We brought reusable bags to the grocery. I recycled earnestly and I spent a small fortune on Compact Fluorescent Bulbs. We had insulated, caulked and foamed our farmhouse for seven years. We had installed hi-tech thermostats that were programmed to force us into bed by 10 p.m. and to stay in bed until after 6 p.m. We were, however, doing little to help with global warming, energy independence or saving the polar bears. Also, my business was off, we were nearing our golden years, and heating oil, electricity and gasoline prices were incredibly volatile.

My heart and my wallet were in sync, but I lacked the big hammer it takes to make a dent in our community's environmental impact. What could a couple in a small Western Maine town do? I had once built my own electric car. My father called it a go-cart, but he lacked vision. This past spring I decided that I was going to get "off the grid." I wasn't sure what the grid was, but if I spent enough time on the Internet I could figure that detail out. I took a SAD 61 Adult Ed course, ÒBuild Your Own Windmill.Ó Like every adult ed course I have taken in Bridgton, this class was entertaining, informative and instructive. Bill Tardiff was the eccentric, forward-thinking, slightly wacko instructor. The type that was never around in my formative years. He started the course saying that everyone was going to build a working windmill. Furthermore, no one was to spend more than $20 on this machine. I just knew I had saved and stacked all that junk in my barn for this moment!

I am pretty handy and always looking for a justification for all the tools I have acquired. By the conclusion of the course I had a bench mounted, working turbine with hand crafted blades. My last task was deploying Lovell's only power generator since the last dam was abandoned. The best wind is not in our garden, not even on a pole on our patio. The best wind is 60 feet in the air on top of our barn. This posed a problem. In college I spent summers roofing. Thirty years ago I owned a hang glider. But now the two-step stool in our pantry makes me think of safety harnesses, and vertigo. My kids, who have helped in the major renovations of our homes, now smirk at how I scoot along a roof ridge on my butt while they do pirouettes alongside. I am fearless though, in the pursuit of saving the environment. I screwed up my courage, and got my 40-foot extension ladder out of its exile. Then I called my son in Vermont and asked him to come home to climb up onto the roof. I told you, I am fearless in these matters.

He hoisted the windmill a good 70 feet into the air. I took the important job of managing from the ground. Ann took the equally important role of instructing our son, an equipped, trained and experienced forester on how to climb up a roof. Wired, braced for a gale, field tested, and designed to turn itself into the slightest breeze we watched Lovell Light & Power's Number One Generator face the brisk, autumn winds and make electricity. The leaves rustled, the smoke in our neighbor's chimney wafted up and away, and the spectators bundled against the gusts, but the blades on LL&P #1 did not move. My son, a willing, but not always outspoken supporter, remained on the peak of the roof (fearless, like his dad). He gave the blades a spin. Lovell Light & Power #1 gave a burst of power (4 volts) and then wound down to idle. After the snide remarks subsided I headed back to the drawing board where I turned on some lights, turned up the heat, and started every ancillary piece of equipment my computer had. I am accustomed to "adjusting for success." It turns out that my blades were designed to stand up to gale force winds without being ripped asunder, but that meant they were too beefy to turn in most of the winds we will ever see in Western Maine.

I made another set of blades and, coercing my son to climb the barn again, we installed Lovell Light & Power Electric Generator #1.1. Mother Nature and I made power! Twenty-eight volts of juice from the top of my barn! But what can you do with 28 volts — DC? Instructor Bill had mentioned this at the beginning of the course, but I was never one to dwell on the negative. I would need some batteries to store this juice and some electronic gizmos (a technical term), but could I run my hot tub, my boiler, my fridge, my computer? "Yes, but no." I could run my fridge for a few hours, I could run the boiler, but not with Brian, my heating guy's, approval. I could run the lights in my barn. I could run my computer but I was not going to hook anything I made up to my temperamental computer. It is barely on speaking terms with CMP.

Ann says we not only have the first power generator in town, but we also have the village's most prominent and ugliest weathervane! Edison and Ford probably had the same issues with their wives!

So, now I am contemplating a larger windmill, one that will frighten children and neighborhood dogs. Enthused with my success I am looking into photovoltaic roof cells, and if that all goes well I may hunt around for some uranium and a metal trash can to create LL&P's first Three Mile Island. I've got compost too. I could generate some methane and sell gas to those pipeline guys. It is only a matter of time before I take my chain saw to the utility pole on my front lawn. I was on to something when I made that first electric go-cart.

Stay tuned.

Price Hutchins is at the peak of a mediocre career. This career includes restaurant owner, carpenter, toilet paper salesperson, stay at home Dad, chemical salesperson, and entrepreneur. Currently Price and his wife Ann are remodeling an 1813 farmhouse while he operates a small business out of the barn.

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