Small rotators of this size are known only for their decorative value. The eight foot tall farm windmill seen in many front yards comes to mind. Numbers?? The shaft runs down below the little ledge to be seen in the pics and a 4 inch diameter pulley was fastened to the shaft. Then we bought a small 12 volt bicycle generator (actually an alternator that runs with a little wheel with friction off the tire rims) and pressed it up against the rotating pulley and lit a little LED light with it in winds not much above 5 - 7 mph. I am embarrassed to claim such a small amount of power production. Little as it is, the town of Tehachapi, California, one of the windpower capitols of the world, was excited by this small event here and a short article appeared about it in one of the weeklies. More info will be provided as testing continues.

The project identified in these postings has been submitted to a state grant program as a pre-proposal abstract and word was just received that it has passed this first hurdle. The deadline for the full proposal submittal is the end of the month of September. Competition in these is quite high especially now with increased focus on energy issues. It does not matter where you are located as long as benefits from the work accrue to this state, my location. It is very good news that this project is in the running and you are invited to provide help with this insofar as your interests and time allow.

Incidentally, both verticals and horizontals are to be covered and a rotor for a horizontals rotator that makes use of these same concepts is to be made today. There is no time to put all this out on this discussion list and discretion is advised in keeping the good name of the "OtherPower" board intact. Some curiosity has surfaced over what the dickens these guys on the OtherPower home page have been doing as developers of the 17 foot diameter 3 kw wind turbine presented in such superb detail. The efforts proposed here under this grant program (links available upon request) suggest tests using about the same turbine rating.