Point Reyes Light - April 21, 2005
West Marin firm marketing 'green energy'
By Peter Jamison
Wind Harvest Company CEO George Wagner understands the waiting game. When he quit his day job as an environmental attorney in Santa Monica in 1976 to found a wind turbine design firm with artist Sam Francis and engineer Robert Thomas, it took five years of tinkering before they were able to produce a viable turbine. It was a long-shot venture: at the time, no industrial windfarms existed here or abroad.
Five years later Thomas was tapped by Governor Jerry Brown to head the state’s wind energy program, and WHC’s progress was put on hold. Because of a conflict-of-interest statute in his contract, Thomas was forced to temporarily abandon his work on the turbine.
It wasn’t until 1982, when Thomas stepped down from the California Energy Commission, that he perfected and patented his first vertical-axis wind turbine, the Windstar 480. WHC hoped to thrive by filling a need for smaller, less visually intrusive windfarms in a market dominated by enormous, horizontal-axis wind turbines of the kind seen today along Interstate-580 at Altamont Pass.
Reagan administration spurned wind power
But by then, trouble was brewing. "Reagan came in, and the whole thing just stopped," Wagner recalled. The new presidential administration elected in 1980, he said, pulled the rug out from beneath wind utilities, removing the companies’ vital safety net of state and federal tax credits. Wind power was scuttled to make way for an oil-friendly national energy plan.
Since then, WHC has persisted at the fringes of an industry that has been in steady decline over the last two decades. There were once 30 companies designing wind turbines in the US; WHC is one of the remaining three.
But things may be at last be looking up for the Point Reyes Station-based company, Wagner said, as an explosion of interest in wind energy, primarily from governments abroad, offers WHC new cause for hope. In the past six months, Wagner said that he has fielded calls from potential clients in locations as diverse as Scotland, Germany, Argentina, Texas, and Louisiana.
"Governments are starting to react quite positively," Wagner said, attributing renewed zeal for wind in part to the Kyoto Accords, which dictate stricter environmental standards for many of the world’s nations.
"It’s encouraging," agreed Charles Post, WHC’s vice president of government relations. "It reflects a growing understanding of the need for renewable energy."
But WHC’s hopes have been raised – and dashed – before. In the late 1980s, the company was courted by the People’s Republic of China for a commission to install a windfarm near the Great Wall. Chinese government officials visited WHC’s offices in California, and a Windstar prototype turbine was erected in China. Wagner came home from his last business trip to the country just before the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, when the Chinese army killed as many as 1,000 students in a peaceful protest in Beijing.
Quit business with China after 1989 uprising
"After that, the whole atmosphere just changed." Wagner said. Influenced in part by widespread international condemnation of the Chinese government, WHC terminated its dealings with China.
Another big break came in 1992, when WHC won a $3.5 million power sales contract in the UK. The company built a windfarm in Wales on property owned by the British royal family.
"That was a big deal," Wagner said. "I still have press releases from Prince Charles."
But problems soon followed. High maintenance costs (exacerbated by damage from Welsh vandals who resented the turbines as new reminders of the royals’ presence), led WHC to strike a deal with Zond, a large wind energy company. As part of the deal, Zond was to bring in security guards. But Zond, which unknown to Wagner was ready to go under, was soon acquired by a larger, Houston-based corporation called Enron.
Burned by Enron ‘sleazebags’
"It turned out that Enron Wind was one of the only profitable divisions of the company," Wagner quipped. But Enron Wind’s prowess did not spread to its dealings with WHC. "At that time Enron was very proper. We had $18 million guaranteed profit on the contract; all they had to do was put the turbines up and put up security. Then they didn’t do anything for six months, and we had to kick them off." WHC had no choice but to disassemble the UK turbines and concede defeat.
"The scandal erupted not long after that," Wagner said, referring to the collapse of Enron in 2001 after it was revealed the company had engaged in fraudulent accounting. "Who would have thought that they were sleazebags?"
To date, WHC’s only unqualified success is represented by a small cluster of Windstar 530G turbines in the Palm Springs desert. The three turbines supply energy for the Ex’Pressions New Media School in Palm Springs.
But change is in the air. In the past six months WHC has begun to receive overtures from foreign governments and a few US developers for new vertical-turbine installations. Among the more promising of the potential clients now in the field is the Scottish regional government, which is avidly pursuing wind utilities development after setting itself one of the most ambitious renewable energy plans in the world: by 2020, the Scots plan to generate 40 percent of their energy from renewable sources.
Scottish government takes notice
"We’ve currently got 13 percent," said Lorna Jack, director of The Americas for Scottish Development International, which represents the Scottish government in its search for foreign utility contractors. "That’s still 27 percent to go."
The Scots were first drawn to WHC by its unique turbine design. Unlike traditional windmills, which are large, noisy, and difficult to install or repair, Windstar turbines are visually unobtrusive, relatively quiet, and, Wagner said, remarkably easy to install.
"You could bring these things in on a donkey cart," Wagner said. "You and I could install one together."
The Windstar’s ease of installation appeals to countries, such as Scotland, that seek to generate jobs for local workers, who can be trained to erect the turbines. Other wind utilities, such as General Electric, typically import a crew of their own employees to build windfarms.
"Effectively, if they choose to operate in Scotland, they'll be creating jobs and sustaining employment," Jack said.
In a land prized for its stark green highlands and scenic vistas, the Windstar’s small size also makes it especially attractive.
"There are issues with placement of traditional turbines," Jack said. "People want to avoid having them in their back yard."
Wagner said the Windstar could offer a solution to the Scots’ desire to minimize the visual impact of windfarms.
"You can take this and put it behind a ridge so people won’t see it," he said.
The design for the Windstar turbine first came to co-founder Thomas in a dream, Wagner said. Thomas, like Wagner, is a devoté of the late Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, who emphasized the importance of subconscious symbols. After talking to several friends, Thomas became convinced that his dream vision of a "five-pointed star" could be put to practical use.
Opinions differ over turbines’ unique design
Wind energy advocates are divided on the viability of vertical turbines, such as the ones designed by Windstar, as opposed to the more widespread horizontal variety. Heather Rhoads-Weaver, a small-turbine advocate at the American Wind Energy Association, said the advantages of vertical turbines, while often vaunted by their designers, are unproven.
"I haven’t seen a lot of results of these machines being used successfully," Rhoads-Weaver said. She noted that the principal disadvantage of vertical turbines is that they are shorter than horizontal turbines because of engineering necessities and hence unable to reach high above the ground, where wind speed is typically greater. "Generally," she concluded, "I would say that vertical-axis systems are still in the planning stage."
Dale Berg, an engineer and principal member of the technical staff at Sandia National Laboratories, disagreed, stating that while vertical and horizontal turbines may have different applications, neither system has a clear advantage over the other. Berg said that the US Department of Energy conducted a series of studies comparing the two designs in the late 1980s; the results, he said, showed that "they both have advantages and disadvantages."
"The Department of Energy funding for vertical-axis research stopped back in the late ’90s," Berg said. "And there were no US companies interested in producing them at that point. But that wasn’t based on any demonstrated inherent advantages to the horizontal axis. It’s just a technology that’s more easily envisioned."
Berg added that while vertical turbines fell out of favor in the late 1990s, he has begun to notice a rise in utilities’ interest in vertical-axis technology.
"I’m now getting a fair number of calls of interest in vertical axis," Berg said. "In certain situations it has a significant advantage, such as places where the wind is constantly shifting direction."
One possible, though seemingly improbable, location for future vertical turbines, Berg said, was atop the proposed Freedom Towers to be erected over the site of the former World Trade Center in Manhattan.
Wagner said that vertical turbines and horizontal turbines can actually be used in tandem, with the smaller, vertical turbines serving as "infill" turbines between the larger, more widely spaced horizontal turbines. WHC was recently granted a patent for a "vortex" configuration of Windstar 1400 turbines that it hopes to install on many existing horizontal-axis windfarms.
"Existing windfarms have already made significant investments in infrastructure, such as permitting and land leasing, as well as installing the necessary infrastructure," said Kevin Wolf, WHC’s vice president of business development. "Installing an under-story of Windstar 1400 arrays allows greater returns on these existing capital investments."
Wind cheaper than fossil fuels
Whatever the eventual deployment of vertical and horizontal turbines on windfarms looks like, it seems probable that wind will figure prominently in future energy policy, both at home and abroad. A 1988 report by the California Energy Commission stated that at its highest level of output, wind-generated power costs five cents per 20.7 kilowatts per hour. By comparison, a nickel’s worth of oil can generate 13.3 kilowatts per hour. A nickel’s worth of natural gas can generate 12.9 kilowatts per hour, making wind-generated power far more efficient than its non-renewable counterparts.
Many energy experts predict that the world’s remaining fossil fuels are in short supply. Professor Paul B. Weisz of the University of Pennsylvania wrote last July in Physics Today magazine that world oil production will peak and then decline in the next few decades. Weisz argues that there is a 95 percent chance that world oil production will peak between the years 2040 and 2050. US oil production peaked in 1970, and has been in decline for the last three decades, he noted.
Despite Americans’ growing dependency on foreign energy sources, the US government has proven itself slow to reform the national energy policy. In contrast to the Scottish goal of reaching 40 percent renewable energy by the year 2020, President George W. Bush has vowed to veto an energy bill stipulating that US utilities produce 10 percent of their electricity from renewable sources by 2020. State governments, while generally mandating greener energy standards than the federal government, have also been accused of dragging their feet: last fall, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed SB1478, which would have changed California’s target year for achieving its current 20 percent renewable-energy goal from 2017 to 2010.
Disappointed by successive presidential administrations
Nor is the current Republican administration solely to blame for stalling the pursuit of renewable-energy sources, Wagner said. In some ways, he noted, the Clinton administration’s failure to implement a progressive energy policy was more disappointing.
"[Vice President] Al Gore was a phenomenal proponent of wind, and they didn’t do anything." Wagner said. "They’ve got to change their thinking. A lot of these people are beholden to the special interests of oil. No American bank will loan to any wind company in this country – that’s because there’s no support from the government."
But Wagner isn’t holding his breath for more wind-friendly policies at home. Like America’s other two wind-turbine designers, Clipper Wind Power of Carpinteria (Santa Barbara County) and General Electric, WHC is at present pursuing most of its business abroad. During The Light’s recent visit to WHC’s small office above Gallery Route 1 in downtown Point Reyes Station, Wagner, when not answering a flurry of telephone calls from those interested in WHC’s turbines, explained that his company has been able to stay in business through the shared environmentalism of its founders, executives, and investors.
"Out of 110 investors, we have about 80 hardcore environmentalists – people who are really activists," he said. WHC executives’ devotion to advancing wind energy is no less striking: Wagner said that nobody in the company has taken a salary in years. At WHC, building windfarms is a labor of love.
"If I didn’t have social security and a wife who worked," Wagner said with a grin, "I’d have to go back to practicing law."
But the waiting game is worth it, he added, when you have a vision to sustain you. In his case, that vision – first dreamed by Bob Thomas almost 30 years ago and not yet realized – is the widespread implementation of a vertical-axis windmill.
"If you want to do big things," Wagner said, "you have to think big."