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I used to attend every annual
"Windpower" conference sponsored by AWEA. The thought was "How could I
afford to miss the most important event in wind energy every year?".
My first Windpower Conference found me excited to meet all the wind
energy researchers at NREL, so we could compare notes regarding all the
advanced types of wind turbines they must be working on.
When I finally found the NREL booth, it was probably the least
impressive booth at the whole show. The small NREL booth featured a few
tables with pamphlets, a couple posters, and a 46-inch diameter Air-403
turbine on a table, just to show something wind-related.
The wind researchers I sought to meet were seldom to be seen, usually
attending "breakout sessions" and seminars. There was a nice lady with
glasses who was in charge of the NREL booth. She was there about half
the time. Otherwise the NREL booth was mostly unmanned - a
mini-ghost-town in a sea of activity.
Still I thought it was important to fly across the country, rent a car
and a hotel, put on some nice clothes and obediently pick my way across
unfamiliar cities in rush-hour traffic so I could find parking, then
line up to input my information into a computer terminal, so I could
pay my share of the expenses of this obligatory mega-show of enthusiasm
for wind power.
And I did make contacts. I got to know the chief engineer for GE Wind
for example. Their head of anemometry had been conducting the
CEC-sponsored testing of the first SuperTurbine(R) prototypes. This
chief engineer told me I would have to show a lower COE (cost of
energy) and they would be happy to adopt my technology. Was this new
information? No, show a lower COE and the world will beat a path to
your door. Duh, right? I felw across the country to learn that? Well
some lessons are simple yet hard to grasp.
I noticed Vestas and all the rest were quite busy having meetings with
windfarm developers. While their junior level engineers had some
enthusiasm for new ideas like SuperTurbine(R), for most industry
players, there was not a lot of extra time for fooling around. They
were in business, with meetings scheduled and deals to make.
I began to notice that every year the Koreans would be promoting goofy
vertical-axis multi-colored machines with cloth sails, or sideways
versions thereof. There was always some Professor Crackpot promoting a
100% solidity vertical-axis metal machine with maglev bearings to add
1% to a machine that gave up 99% of its power anyway... a demo proving
it could actually spin(!), powered by an electric fan - quite a comedy.
The fact that promoters of such goofy ideas were willing to spend even
more money by renting a booth and embarrass themselves explaining how a
100% solidity vertical-axis solid metal maglev machine was the next
step past the current GE machines made good entertainment for the rest
of us. I think it made us feel better that we were wasting less money
than them, and of course it made us feel like our basic knowledge of
wind energy was difficult to obtain by seeing people who could
seemingly never "get it" no matter how much time and money they spent.
We saw these inventors as misguided people wasting money by traveling
across the world for our entertainment. A circus of wind turbine design
goofiness.
I was always hoping to find more sources for blades, generators, etc.,
but it seemed that I came away disappointed every year. I remember
thinking how if I was not at the show, I could be spending the time and
money building turbines - imagine that!
There was a "small-wind" area at the Windpower show every year. I had
sort of fallen into the "small-wind" camp, since it's easier to prove a
new design concept at a smaller scale, and the leader in small wind was
the Bergey turbine. We have a 10 kW Bergey on a 120-foot tower powering
this place for example. I got to know Mike Bergey, the owner, and some
of his engineering staff too.
Well one year I planned a multi-day trip across the country, had
renderings printed out, packed up all my stuff, bought my tickets, flew
into a strange city, got my hotel, then woke up to fight my way through
the smog and rush-hour traffic of that strange city, found the
convention center, found where to park, paid my $20 parking fee, and
started walking, in my dress shows, carrying all kinds of crap. I
finally got to the point where I could wait in line to enter my info
into a terminal, pay my entry fee, then at last get inside the gigantic
trade show.
I searched for the "small-wind" section, and when I finally stumbled
across it after a few hours, I noticed there was no Bergey booth. I had
to check several times and ask a few people "Hey have you seen the
Bergey Booth? Has anyone seen Mike Bergey? I slowly realized that
Bergey, the industry leader for small wind, did not even come to this
trade show. No booth. No turbine on display. No Mike Bergey. I was in
disbelief. How could Bergey, the market leader, NOT be at the AWEA
WindPower show?
Well it slowly dawned on me: Bergey as a company probably had something
better to do. Building turbines perhaps? Yup I realized that for one
year at least, they had decided all that expense and time spent, all
that focus taken away from production, was apparently not worth it.
I realized that wind energy is just one more business. Either one is in
the business or they are not, and all the trade shows in the world
won't change that, except to take even MORE time away from doing it. I
realized it is NOT mandatory to attend every trade show. I started to
notice that successful wind energy people, the ones you never hear
about, were attending OTHER trade shows, where they could find the
components they needed to DO wind energy.
I realized that for all the big companies making big deals, the show
was important. And for newbies with colorful cloth-sails traveling
upwind and downwind, maglev bearings and the like, a trade show was an
indispensable part of their illusion and delusions that they were
"doing something" even if it was just to explain their dubious theories
to an endless stream of people who actually understand wind energy and
are amused at how badly they had missed the target.
One year it finally dawned on me that, trade show or no trade show, I
was either going to build, test, develop, and perfect one or more
models of wind energy devices, or not. No trade show was going to help
much, it seemed. In my case it seemed that every trade show was really
just one more way to spend a lot of time and money for nothing,
starting with the days of preparation to even pack and get tickets and
plan the trip, ending with the lost time and money that took me away
from any way I could actually make a difference, placing me instead
into the all-talk mode where I could spend a lot of money to spend all
day yakking it up to end up with a pair of sore feet in a strange motel
room figuring out how much money I was wasting and how much stuff I
needed to get done that I could not get done in a strange city in a
rented motel room.
Knowing this I still felt compelled to attend The first AWE conference,
especially considering I still had the 2008 Popular Science Invention
of the Year Sky Serpent sitting there ready to fly for a few dollars
worth of helium, that it all deployed from my old van with the test
rack, and that the conference was in California so I could drive that
van there and deploy the demo easily. How could I miss it?
But by the next conference AWE had already degenerated to an empty
talkfest with no models flown and wannabe "too-big-to-fail" "players"
like Honeywell who had shown an inability to produce a decent small
turbine already, or NASA, who could just "credential" their way
through, while announcing that their key advantage was not actually
having to show any progress - nothingness masquerading as
somethingness.
Still, how could I not attend - again, it was right here in California
- I could drive there! The best part for me was to see a few cool
people like Joe F., and to visit the nice town of Stanford, and have
some pizza. I left trying to figure out why almost nobody seemed to be
pursuing any of the simple ways to do AWE. The most memorable
technological highlights of the conference were the dark,
stealthy-looking, Heinlein-esque, jet-fighterish Honewell rendering of
a high-speed tethered kite, suitable for a 1970's magazine cover, and
the promise of NASA to get no results, because of their advantage of
not having to show any results, to get paid anyway.
Anyway trade shows and conferences are nice, especially for a robust
industry where there are lots of deals to be made. But for R & D,
now that we have the internet, I'm not sure how valuable conferences
are, as currently configured at least. Seems to me a "fly-in" aspect
would at least keep it a bit more interesting. I don't see much further
value in hearing people talk about their theories at this point. Either
they have the ability to do wind energy, or they don't - let's see what
you got!
:)
Doug S.
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