Energy Flashes

November/December 1974

BILL PATCH- who rode a bicycle from Minier, Illinois to Redkey, Indiana to see THE MOTHER EARTH030-064-01.htm NEWS' methane generator last spring-turned right around and rode back to Minier...where he and Dale Whitley then proceeded to build a 20,322-gallon anaerobic digester of their own. Does it work? "We burned off 142,450 cubic feet of methane during the four summer months," says Bill. "That's equal to approximately 1,110 gallons of gasoline. As you can see, it's best to get ready to use your gas before you make it:" Look for more on the Whitley-Patch digester (with photos:) in MOTHER NO. 31.

THE METHANE IDEA CATCHES ON IN SOUTH AMERICA : Nicole Maxwell, the first white woman to study the miraculous herbal medicines used by remote tribes in the Amazon Basin (see the interview with Nicole in LIFESTYLE N0. 6), writes from Bogota, Colombia: "Organic farming is big at the University and, this being cattle country, everybody's building little plants to convert manure into methane for kitchen use."

WHAT COSTS ONE MILLION DOLLARS MORE t han a conventional heating, ventilating and air-conditioning system for the same space ...but is expected to both heat and cool a 1.3-million-squarefoot building at a savings of 20 million kilowatt hours and $200,000 a year? Answer: A 1.6-million-gallon concrete tank filled with water and equipped with computer-controlled heat exchangers. The monster vat is currently being installed in the Toronto headquarters of Canada's giant Ontario,Hydro-Electric Commission and its contractors think that "other people are going to want systems like this". Although the storage container's auxiliary valves, compartments, plumbing, chillers and switches seem somewhat complicated, the basic idea of the whole shebang is Harold Hay simple: When the building's living space is too hot, excess Btu's are pumped into the mass of water... from which they are later extracted to once again warm the space as desired. (Harold Hay, by the way, is the California inventor who has successfully heated and cooled a house with a giant roof-mounted "water bed" and a series of moving panels which cover and/or expose the mass of liquid to the sun.)

JOHN D'ANGELO is a young man who's done his homework. He visited Henry Clews' Solar Wind operation in Maine last February and bought a 2,000-watt wind-driven generator. He contributed to the American Wind Energy Association meeting in Detroit in September (see the short article about that gathering elsewhere in this issue). He's visited THE Mother Earth News' methane plant in Indiana and Bill Patch's anaerobic digester in Illinois. And now D'Angelo has set up his own company-Independent Energy Systems-to handle wind, methane, solar, fuel cell and other "alternative" power equipment. The IES shop is located at 6043 Sterrettania Road, Fairview, Pennsylvania 16415 and the telephone number is (814) 868-6211. John also deals in 10-speed bikes and backpacking and climbing equipment. Give him a call if you live in the Erie area.

UNCONFIRMED REPORT: Stateline Alternative Power Systems (nope, we never heard of the firm before either), P.O. Box 124, Custer, Washington 98240 is supposed to have found "a small supply of small Pelton-type, impulse turbine water wheels, new, ideal for people who want to build their own hydroplants". The note (from Stateline) which gave us this information was hardly decipherable and included no prices or substantiating photographs. We hope this lead is on the level but advise caution to anyone to whom the news seems too good to be true. It may well be exactly that.