Bergey Windpower Case Study

Tuttle, Oklahoma

 Bill Reduction + Back-up Power

Clark Taylor lives on 5 acres west of the small town of Tuttle, in central Oklahoma.  His home is served by a rural electric coop, Oklahoma Electric Cooperative (OEC) and his electric service is reasonably reliable.  But the length of the power lines between his home and the closest substation does cause more power outages than would be experienced if he lived in town.  His area also gets severe ice storms in the winter and these storms sometimes knock the power lines down, leaving his home without power for days at a time.

As a result Mr. Taylor was pleased to have an opportunity to participate in a joint Bergey Windpower / US-DOE project to study the impact of small wind systems on the power grid in remote areas.  Under the "OEC Distributed Generation Project", BWC has installed six residential wind systems within a 2 mile radius of Mr. Clarks home.  Five of the systems have battery banks that allow the systems to deliver power to the grid during times of peak electrical demand and two of the systems have the additional capability of providing power to the home during power outages.  Mr. Clark has one of these two systems.

The photo shows the Clark home with its 7.5 kW Bergey turbine on a 30 m (100 ft) guyed-lattice tower.  The batteries and Trace sine wave inverters are located in the garage.  In normal operation the system reduces Mr. Taylor's utility bill.  Since Oklahoma offers Net Metering, that includes actually turning his OEC electric meter backwards when there is excess production from the wind system.  Except for summer months, when Mr. Taylor air-conditions his entire home, his electric bill is usually zero, or even negative.  During a power outage his home is isolated from the power grid and then powered from the wind system.

BWC and US-DOE are studying whether these systems can improve the quality of electrical service in rural areas.  By supplying power during peak demand times these systems may delay the need for cooperatives to upgrade facilities as the load grows, reducing capital expenditures.  For the rural cooperative customers, these systems can provide the security of continuous power availability.