Kōrero: Wind and solar power

Photographed in 1984, Frank Cresswell of Petone was heading for energy self-sufficiency, using a variety of methods to harness Mother Nature’s energy in his back yard. His solar panels heated water to 80°C in summer and 50°C in winter, and the conventional wind turbine produced 200 watts of electrical energy. He had not determined the energy output of his oil-drum wind generator.

Another resourceful inventor, Michael Lawlie, takes motors from discarded washing machines and converts them to small wind turbines by adding a couple of blades and tweaking the electronics. Listen to Michael talking to Sean Plunket on Morning Report in 2003.

Transcript

Fisher and Paykel have a recycling plant in Auckland and they stripped down washing machines there as part of their recycling process. And about 18 months ago when we started experimenting with them smart drives and needed a good supply of them, we contacted Fisher and Paykel and said, look, how about you sending these recycled motors which are clearly only going to scrap to be melted down to us and so ever since then that's what's been happening and we've been developing a number of products around those parts.

Sean Plunket: Right, so you slap what,  a few propellers essentially on it and it generates electricity?

Yeah what I think in the area, when there's wind, yes its just a case of matching the turbine with a suitable propeller. We actually don't manufacture the propeller ourselves, we bring that in from California. With the water turbines we have a mould here for making the pelton rotors which we match with the smart drive units and we also make a turgo water turbine as well.