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Published in the Hunterdon County Democrat on 5/12/05

By Dave Charron

As long as the wind's blowing, Frank Hahola's home in Alexandria Township will have plenty of power. His wind generator and tower stands on the highest corner of the farm on Mount Salem Road.

"It's up on a little knob about 720 feet in the air, it gets plenty of wind up there," said Hahola, the proud new owner.

The family farm, which grows hay, corn and soybeans, now produces electricity.

"I'm an electrician by trade and I've always wanted to do something like this I was really excited when I went and looked at our electric meter running backwards, which means we were generating more power than we were using," he said.

He said that the 10-kilowatt generator is sized to meet his household needs. "It will allow me to zero out my electric bill. It has about twice the capacity of a gasoline generator," he said. Mr. Hahola figures that he'll recoup his investment in about two years. "The project cost me around $80,000, but I'll also receive a ($50,000) rebate from the state," he said.

According to Mike Mazzeo of Ecological Systems in Waldwick, "This is the first wind generator installed in Hunterdon County with 60 percent funding from the N.J. Clean Energy Program," he said. Ecological Systems helped Hahola complete the rebate application, technical worksheets, equipment acquisition and installation.

These new generators look a bit like the old water-pump variety as seen on many old-time farms but mechanically they are very different. Modern wind turbines use tough, fiberglass rotor blades, which make them much stronger than earlier models.

"There are few moving internal parts, no painting and the generator will last 25 years," said Hahola.

He said a permanent magnet rotates inside a stationary coil. "This allows us to eliminate problems with bushings and slip rings," he said.

The advanced electronic controls allow the unit to use wind more effectively, moving the rotor blades so the turbine can capture the maximum amount of wind. The rotor also tracks and records environmental information. The system has a monitoring device and a memory chip that can download information to a personal computer producing a variety of charts and graphs.

There are two varieties of these wind systems. The type used in more remote areas without access to a power source use the excess power to recharge batteries. "I'm using a direct grid type," said Hahola. "I'm patched into the electric power grid; if I generate more power than I need, it feeds back into the utility company's grid. If the grid loses power, my system automatically shuts down, too. This can't be considered an emergency backup system," he said.

As a power source, wind energy is less predictable than solar energy, but it is also typically available for more hours in a given day. More information on state and federal incentives for wind electric generators and other renewable energy systems can be found at ecologicalsystems.biz.