Southwest Windpower's David Calley, with turbine.
David Calley Is Banking on the Wind
June / July 2004
Volume 2 Number 3
It is always good to start early. David Calley built his first wind turbine at age 12 with a bicycle hub generator and advice from his science-teacher father and Ph.D-candidate brother. By the time he built his first small system, he had helped his father build about fifty solar hot water heaters and wind generators.
For his first wind generator, he chose a savonius, or vertical-axis, rotor and stored the output in a motorcycle battery. That small power source was sufficient to run young David's cassette player and bedroom light.
Today, as founder and CEO of Southwest Windpower, Inc., in Flagstaff, Ariz., he builds grown-up horizontal-axis wind turbines that can power an entire home or even a village.
Throughout high school, Calley built and sold simple wind turbines to his neighbors in Northern Arizona and while studying physics at Northern Arizona University, he developed a wind generator based on inexpensive, readily available automotive components. That design was patented with help from his uncle, a patent agent, and became the basis for his company. Those turbines were sold internationally, particularly in remote areas with poor infrastructure. The company, which was established in 1987, was surviving but not thriving. Sales were flat and, in 1993, Calley decided to redirect the company's efforts to complement small-scale solar power.
By the early 1990s, solar electric or photovoltaics (PV) had become a major player in renewable energy for small-use and remote applications. PV's virtues include relatively low maintenance, easy installation, modularity and reliability. Calley concluded that wind power could provide those advantages and do so at a comparable price. To add to its market acceptance, his device could be coupled with PV to provide a consistent source of energy, regardless of the weather and seasonal fluctuations in wind and sunlight. One final feature that would make Southwest Windpower's new turbines practical for most locations: they were small and light enough to be mounted directly on roofs, just like PV panels.
The new machine was called Air, and by 1999 the company had grown from breaking even at $250,000 to more than $5 million in sales. The Air turbines produce up to 400 watts, which, according to Calley, provides a powerful and economical supplement to PV systems. Some of the applications for the Air machines include remote monitoring and telecommunications, ship-based navigational lights, sailboats and recreational vehicles, water pumping, rural electrification and residential off-grid and grid-tie systems. To date, more than 60,000 Air machines have been sold, making it the best-selling wind turbine in the world.
As sales grew, so did Southwest Windpower's staff; from Calley and one engineering assistant in 1993 to 48 engineers, technicians, production, and administrative personnel today. Calley is particularly proud that many of his employees are as ideologically motivated as he is. He says he is able to hire highly qualified, top of their class engineers from the best universities. Like their boss, his workers believe in what they are doing. Calley says, "Our workers have a fairly free hand. I'm not a micromanager. We are all focused on what we need to do. Just running a company has never been my goal; I'm motivated by the cause of building a better world."
If your neighbor likes it, we've succeeded
In 2000, Southwest Windpower purchased its nearest competitor, World Power Technologies, manufacturers of 900 to 3,000-watt wind turbines. The addition of World Power's Whisper line of wind turbines extended the company's reach further into the stand-alone wind power market. Southwest Windpower's emphasis now is on product improvements to make the systems more reliable, quieter, and more attractive. As Calley says, "It's not the customer that's hard to please, it's the neighbor. If he likes the machine, we've succeeded."
The Air and Whisper product lines provide the steady revenue for the company.
Meanwhile, Calley and his engineering crew are working on a new design that, if it meets its objectives, will have about one-fifth the cost of energy of the current Air machine, will be so quiet that the noise of the blades will not be noticeable at the base of the tower, and will not require an external battery and converter. According to Calley, "Everything is built into the machine. You could literally plug these into the wall outlet if code permitted it. Current machines have to have a battery and an inverter to convert the battery power to the 60 Hz that's acceptable to the utility. This requires larger, more complex and more expensive systems. Our new machine will be like an appliance, not exactly roll it in and plug it in, but with a target time for installation of about four hours."
Southwest Windpower hopes to produce these new wind turbines for sale at around $2,500 and expects that in a low wind (12 mph, average) the machine will produce energy equivalent to that used by an average California home. This new machine is designed to produce power competitively with average utility rates without using any subsidies. Expected to be on the market in less than two years, the certification-ready machines will be installed at DOE's National Renewable Energy Laboratory this summer.
The next challenge: cars
Since he was a boy, David Calley has been inventing motors and generators for wind turbines. His other inventing passion is for electric cars. He says, "As soon as I can make wind turbines good enough that they become a normal appliance, like a washing machine; as soon as the technology is mature enough to make them ordinary, I want to move on to vehicles." Calley is experimenting now with a hybrid electric/pedal-power car that weighs about what a 50cc scooter, like a Vespa, does. Pedaling produces up to 30 percent of the energy. This is a great vehicle, he says, that solves two problems in America today, "One, our vehicles are far, far, far too big and two, we don't get enough exercise." The intent for this car is that it does one thing very well. You can drive it to and from work or for running a couple of errands, getting your daily exercise along the way. Calley stresses that this vehicle, like all his other products, will have a strong aesthetic presentation. This, he says, "will not be a motorcycle in a cage." The car will be good looking as well as hyper-efficient and economical. Electric vehicles cost a small fraction of gas vehicles to operate.
According to Calley, an electric car is three times as efficient as a fuel cell car, which is four to five times as efficient as a gasoline-powered vehicle.
It's the battery technology that is pushing the envelope for these applications. A high-performance car made by AC Propulsion, Inc., similar in top speed, Calley says, to a Ferrari or Viper, can already go 300 miles between charges, and a conventional, around-town jitney could stretch that out much further.
A design objective for this project is to mass-produce the electric/pedal car for a selling price of $2,500, just about the same as a home-based wind turbine.
As far as Calley is concerned, "Once you've driven this hybrid vehicle, driving your current car will seem like a sentence. I mean, you could drive a Peterbilt to the market; sure it will get you there, but what a drag!"
David Calley lives the lifestyle he encourages others to follow. He powers his home with wind and sun and just a little propane to run the kitchen stove. He not only drives an electric car, he charges the battery with turbines. His house is not connected to the power grid, though he does have a connection for the test facility on his property. His wife does drive a gas-powered car to provide fail-safe transportation for them and their three-year-old child. He hopes soon to produce a vehicle that will render that fall-back car obsolete. In fact, he would like to help everyone recognize that over-consumption of resources is not only uneconomical and unhealthy for the individual consumer, but fundamentally unwise for the environment and population of the planet. He would like to see a more equitable distribution of the earth's resources, which for him include not only material wealth but the mechanisms to build personal and community security, such as education and political freedom.
Douglas McDonald is a Denver-based freelance writer.
Copyright © 2012 | Innovation America