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Home Turns the Turbines on Power Company; Owners Generate Their Own Heat, Electricity

Posted on: Sunday, 16 October 2005, 15:00 CDT

By MICHELE DERUS

West Bend With two wind generators and 22 photovoltaic solar panels on his 11-acre hilltop property, Allen Bruggink sometimes gets an IOU from his power company instead of a bill.

"This summer, I generated 220 kilowatt hours more than I used. In winter, it's the other way around. But I'm in the process of putting up a third wind generator. I get this new generator up, and they'll owe me," said Bruggink, 73, a retired Wisconsin Gas Co. industrial service technician.

"On a sunny day," Bruggink said, "you can watch the meter run backwards."

Watching a utility meter run backwards, instead of spinning forward to rack up dollars due, is quite a thrill in light of surging energy prices.

This winter, We Energies predicts natural gas prices will soar 40% to 50% and has proposed a 6.9% electric rate increase effective Jan. 1. That portends an average bill for the November-April season of about $1,150 and electric bill of about $465.

"I feel for people who have to pay those kind of prices," Bruggink said. "But a lot of people could be doing the same thing I do, or at least some of it. The world is going to run out of oil, though we don't know exactly when. The more people we get to do things like this, the better off the world will be. "

Bruggink, a lifelong mechanical tinkerer whose yard is sprinkled with fix-up projects, hasn't just weaned his household from fossil fuel. By adding alternative energy sources, he's joined a very select group. Only 81 of We Energies' 1.1 million electricity customers and 1 million natural-gas customers are co-generators both buying and selling power, reported spokeswoman Wendy Parks.

How did Bruggink do it?

In part, he credits his house, a furnaceless structure that he designed and built two years ago in the rural outskirts of metropolitan Milwaukee. Its frame is of polystyrene blocks sandwiched between wooden panels. Like many other houses, it's clad in vinyl siding.

"It makes a sandwich that is very strong. No air infiltration, no moisture problems," Bruggink said. "It's super-insulated. My walls are R-45 and my roof is R-50. Even with no heat, the coolest this house will get is 60 degrees."

To the left of the front door are two 10-foot solar panels angled skyward. Near the garage are seven more panels. Together, they supply the couple's heat, storing enough for one straight week of no- sunshine weather.

Ruth Bruggink, whom her husband describes as "a very patient, very understanding woman," accepts the risk that the sun will peter out when it's most needed. The family has a back-up generator but hasn't had to use it yet.

"If we were still raising a family, maybe it would be harder. But it's just us," she said. "We can do this."

Behind the house is a shed equipped with 22 electricity- producing photovoltaic panels, which connect to We Energies' power grid. In the shed are "Windy Boy" and "Sunny Boy," a pair of meters that keep constant tabs on how much power is being generated.

The house is positioned to the south so as to take full advantage of the sun's power most of the year while shielding windows from a direct hit during summer's longest, hottest days. A battalion of thick evergreens forms a north-end wind break.

A small, blue-bladed windmill spins in the front yard and a much taller white one looms out back, behind a noseless airplane in need of a new engine, a 1950s lawnmower in need of a new ignition system and a fruit-tree orchard. Together, these wind turbines pack 1.6 kilowatts of power.

"My photovoltaic system supplies most of what we need. It produces about 78% of our electricity. The wind generators do the rest. And it all goes into the grid" serving the We Energies network, Bruggink said.

His third, biggest generator a 200-pound, 63-foot-high fiberglass and foam model to be hoisted in place soon with winch and cables will about double the household's wind power capacity. Parks said the family's request to add its 1.5 kilowatt-rated wind turbine to the We Energies' grid "is being reviewed."

The utility official confirmed that the Brugginks are on the brink, not just of energy independence, but steady surplus.

Bruggink can't wait to achieve that.

"Their meter charge eats up most of what they'd owe me right now. It's $5.95 a month," he said. "So even though they owed me, I didn't have them pay me this summer," but had it applied toward his meter charge.

So are the days of paying that pesky meter charge almost over? That depends.

"This new wind generator will give me all the power I need and I may need it all," Bruggink mused. "My next project may be building an electric car."

Copyright 2005, Journal Sentinel Inc. All rights reserved. (Note: This notice does not apply to those news items already copyrighted and received through wire services or other media.)

Source: Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

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