Fugitte’s wind machine stirs up ‘green’ energy

As a whining hair dryer spun the sinuous turbine, a row of green lights began to glow. Clean energy — if you can ignore the hair dryer — was being generated Tuesday on a dinner table at Stone Hearth in Elizabethtown.

A small group of potential investors and some people who just were curious gathered to watch the demonstration of the prototype turbine and learn more about the Wind Energy Corp. startup. The company is an effort by James Fugitte to tap into the burgeoning alternative energy market — which he said is “top-of-mind everywhere in the U.S.”

Fugitte, a former local banker, investor and businessman, plans to build the turbines in a Morgantown factory that once made auto parts. The turbines were designed by Dynastrosi Laboratories, which is run by Fugitte for the time being, in a Western Kentucky University research center in Bowling Green.

These won’t be your run-of-the-mill windmills. The spinning parts — which he calls sails — will be 20 feet tall but light enough for two men holding each end to carry. They will be of a Savonius design — not blades, but solid spirals.

Fugitte named several advantages over larger turbines typically found on wind farms. His devices will be more efficient and quieter. The whirling blade tips of the other windmills approach the speed of sound, so they make a thump-thump sound. Birds — including eagles and condors — sometimes are killed when they fly into the invisible blades. Fugitte’s turbine, on the other hand, will appear solid.

Doug Gebler, a retired chemist and engineer who attended Tuesday’s demonstration, said he saw bladed windmills in the West Virginia mountains. “They’re pretty from an airplane; they’re not pretty up close.” Plus, they’re unsettling to hear in the wilderness, he said. Gebler said Fugitte’s enterprise is a great idea. Both men think wind energy is the only economically feasible alternative energy source, although they think it could complement solar power. Both sources free customers from having to tie into an existing power grid.

While Fugitte’s turbine could power a house, he’s initially targeting the market for military bases that have a lot of wind and high electric bills. These installations have green energy initiatives. He hopes to sell them as mini-wind farm packages of six turbines for $250,000. For every half-dozen made, Fugitte said he’ll donate one to a developing country. Each sail will produce 25 kilowatts an hour, enough to power 250 light bulbs of 100 watts.

Also, Fugitte will meet with architects in New York, who may want to buy the turbines to put atop buildings. This would be a public relations investment for developers selling their space as powered by green energy. He expects these turbines to pay for themselves in three to five years and then produce free electricity for the rest of their roughly 20-year lifespan. While they can be used in Kentucky, the Governor’s Office of Energy Policy on its Web site says the state has “limited wind energy potential.” Kentucky also has a cheap supply of coal-generated energy.

Price, though, may not be the only motivation for some interested in wind power. “If you have a lot of wind on your farm or on your lot, and you want to be green … then even though it might be a little more expensive than grid energy, you might want to buy one of those,” he said.