Vermont Environmental Consortium

August 1, 2007
Eclectic Green Gadgets Let You Feel the Power
by
Daniel Hecht

Sheila Kerr grew up in a house in which even something as commonplace as watching television became a lesson in energy generation and efficiency. Her father rigged their TV with a pedal-powered generator, and if she didn’t pedal, she didn’t watch.

Now 37, Sheila has taken over the reins of Windstream Power, the business started by her father in 1974. A physicist and electrical engineer, Colin Kerr was ahead of his time, “obsessed” with renewable energy technology; Sheila grew up watching him at work in his shop, making prototypes and testing designs.

In 1981, Kerr achieved considerable success with a small windpower system, the Windstream Basic, a “hardy little turbine” that sold all over the world. He also designed vertical-axis helical turbines that powered pond aerating systems. All along, he continued to pursue human-powered generation.

When he retired, Sheila took over the business “without any training except what I got by osmosis.” Born in Quebec, she earned a degree in First Nation Studies, the history and culture of Canada’s native peoples. She then worked as a camp cook for remote logging operations, being flown by helicopter and dropped off with her stoves in the woods of northern British Columbia and the Yukon.

Last year Windstream became a part of Bowles Corporation, the North Ferrisburgh engineering firm, and moved into an appropriately eclectic complex of Quonset hut and various odd additions. It now serves as a distributor for Southwest Windpower, selling four varieties of small turbines, and continues to make and sell its human power systems.

The simplest is the Human Powered Generator, which can be mounted on a table or on the floor and fitted with handles or pedals. The cranking apparatus is about the size of a fat cast-iron skillet standing on its handle, and the generator puts out 60 watts. Though the HPG works well as a exercise machine – one with the added benefit of generating clean electricity – it’s primarily used for educational purposes.

For demonstrations, Sheila connects the HPG to a switching box with two light bulbs on top, one a 60-watt incandescent, the other a 23-watt compact fluorescent that delivers the same amount of light. When you crank the handles, one of the light bulbs glows, dimly if you’re going slowly, brightly if you speed up.

It gives you an undeniable sense of what “energy” or “power” really is: It’s force. It’s exertion. It’s making something move, or heat up, or light up, against its natural tendency not to.

When the current goes to the compact fluorescent, it’s easy to bring the bulb to full brilliance. But lighting the incandescent bulb is much, much harder. You feel the learning point here: Our familiar technologies consume lots of “energy” or “power”; inefficient ones waste it.

You tend to take this seriously when you are the bio-energy source, converting the food in your stomach into muscular force which is then turned into electricity and finally to light.

The lighting demonstration is useful for educational purposes, but the HPG can also be used to charge Windstream’s Portable Power Pack, a convenient battery and inverter power source, about the size of a lunchbox, with AC and DC outlets.

Windstream’s Human Power Trainer can also charge the PPP: You clip your bicycle into a roller stand, and the bike’s back wheel spins the generator. It’s perfect for getting in some conditioning as you turn Gatorade into electricity.

The human-powered technologies provide a fun, persuasive educational tool, showing school children and museum patrons what “power” and “efficiency” really mean. During demonstrations, the kinetic exertion and throbbing lights generate as much excitement as electricity.

But they also provide crucial power for remote applications. Not all the world has access to an electrical grid or the complicated and expensive technology of gasoline generators. Windstream recently sold 200 HPGs to forestry camps in Siberia, for powering radio equipment. Sturdy, simple, they won’t fail in cold weather or limited maintenance situations.

Another HPG buyer does aid work in remote villages in the Philippines. Formerly, these mountain hamlets got their electricity from car batteries that had to be carried many miles, an arduous trip by donkey, to get recharged. Now, with one Windstream HPG, the batteries can stay put, and the power supply is endless.

What’s the future of human-powered generation? It may depend on other technological developments; for example, the recent influx of crank-driven radios and flashlights in the consumer market is due to advances in silicon chips and light-emitting diodes (LEDs).

Sheila says she and her team think about setups for gyms that harness the potential power generated by all the stationary bikes and cross trainers -- why waste it? Or how about urban buses in which a few transit employees pedal and riders get free fares if they crank out power as they travel?

Imagination is the key to the future.

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Daniel Hecht is a novelist and executive director of Vermont Environmental Consortium. For more information on any Green Grapevine topic, contact vec@norwich.edu.

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