Wind turbine installed atop roof of Dennis
By William Duffee
Students and faculty erected a wind turbine on top of Dennis Hall last weekend, a symbol of Earlham’s efforts toward sustainability spinning above campus for all to see.
The wind turbine is a development of the Hardware Interfacing Project (HIP), a student group in the computer science department that has been working on forms of alternative energy production.
The wind turbine is grid-tied, meaning it feeds the power it generates into Dennis’ electrical grid. Though the turbine doesn’t generate a large amount of power, it is nonetheless a source of alternative energy.
“It’s a small percentage of the building’s power,” said Associate Professor of Computer Science Charlie Peck, the faculty advisor for HIP. “The meter, in effect, never spins backwards, but it slows down.”
The turbine’s peak capacity of energy production is 1.5 kilowatts per hour, but HIP is unsure of how much the turbine will actually generate.
“What we’re going to do is take close readings over a couple of weeks, compare those to the wind data that we have for those same couple of weeks, and then see what relationship they have to each other before we make any big predictions,” Peck said.
“Once we get a year’s worth of data, that will give us a pretty good idea,” said sophomore Ben Smith, a member of HIP.
Though this specific turbine has only been in the making since the fall, Peck and HIP have been working on related projects for much longer.
According to Peck, about five years ago he and Professor of Mathematics Mic Jackson received funding from an anonymous donor to work on sustainable energy projects. Together, the two designed a proposal to incorporate wind and solar energy into Earlham’s energy usage.
They subsequently installed solar panels on the roof of Dennis, which have “been producing a noticeable part of the building’s energy for the last four or five years,” according to Jackson.
Though they would have then worked on harnessing wind energy at Earlham, the technology had not advanced enough to use turbines on campus.
“The wind turbines that were available five years ago were too noisy, too much vibration, and too much of a dynamic load for this roof to handle,” said Jackson.
At the same time, officials said wind power was not possible.
“When we first began this … the common opinion was that this part of Indiana didn’t have enough wind [to generate power],” Jackson said. “Charlie [Peck] and students put in a … wind velocity measuring device on top of Denis seven or eight years ago, and their data has proven that we’ve got sufficient wind.”
With these results, and as technology advanced, the two professors and HIP invested in a small turbine at Miller Farm, and more recently the turbine on Dennis, which is more powerful than Miller Farm’s.
These turbines are part of a larger scheme for sustainable energy at Earlham — a scheme in which HIP plans to play a large role.
The group is looking at three more locations for turbines, which are Earlham and Wilson Halls, as well as another on Dennis. These would be easier to install, compared to the current turbine, according to Smith.
“If we were to put up more, it’d be much quicker, just because we’ve got stuff figured out; we’ve got the people collected,” he said.
However, HIP currently lacks the funds for these turbines, as their two main sources — the anonymous donation and last year’s senior gift — are running dry. Nonetheless, the group is looking at the big picture.
“Our vision for Earlham is a whole lot more. This is just getting our foot in the door, trying to get people both aware that wind energy is a real possibility here and we need more,” Jackson said. “We’d love a few years down the road to see commercialgrade wind towers … south of campus.”
“It turns out that in rough numbers, the college owns enough land in a place that has favorable-enough wind patterns that we could probably produce about two-thirds of the electricity of the campus,” Peck said.
However, Peck noted that current government regulations would not permit instituting the technology to produce and store that energy.
“The legislative, bureaucratic mechanisms in place in the state like Indiana right now are not such that that is possible,” he said.
While Jackson and Peck may be eyeing such projects and plans for the future, both emphasized energy conservation over sustainable energy production.
“Conservation is the first and most important thing you can do,” Peck said.
“The energy conservation side of it is a whole lot more important and more easily dealt with than energy production,” Jackson added. “Energy production is always going to be expensive.”
In order to further the conservation aspect on campus, HIP, Jackson and Peck’s next project will involve monitoring the usage of energy in individual buildings — the entire campus is currently measured on one meter — beginning with Dennis, Warren and Wilson. The group has plans to present the amount of energy used on displays at each building, in the hopes that such displays will encourage students to cut back on individual energy consumption.
In the meantime, HIP, Jackson and Peck hope that their efforts speak to the Earlham community as a whole.
“[A] primary goal is to make people aware that it’s not hard to do. My hope is that students who graduate from Earlham in the coming years will see [alternative energy and conservation] as something to be part of their own lifestyle,” Jackson said. “Maybe they can do solar panels, wind energy, other alternative energy forms to reduce energy demand from this country … that’s maybe the most important thing that might come out of this.”
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