Who is RG Keen?

[joegagan]

back to the topic. i have by coincidence, or by the small circles of life we revolve in, not one but two connections to RG that had seemingly nothing to do with me knowing him online since 99.

one, my cousin's husband worked with him at a big corp going back to when they both were pretty fresh outta college.

two, my friend dale who was a sweet host to us in our roadband days knew Rg well going way back and in fact loaned Rg the actual rangemaster that started the whole RM diy thing.

both true, as told to me.

[PRR]

Belated input:

> I have been thinking ... people who like to make their own windmills

WAY over 70 years old. Here's a funky home-made windmill:

6 volt windmill for farm light, N. Dakota Ag College and USDA, 1935:
  http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/aben-plans/d43-1-1.pdf

VERY simple materials.

Interesting no swivel-contact where power comes off the pole. Only a pig-tail. But in ND the wind blows steady with few reversals. Say 50 per year, randomly CW and CCW. Maybe less than 5 twists per year, maybe less than 15 twists per decade. 15 twists in 7 feet of #10 is tight.... but if it breaks, you splice it. And we know now that a 1935 farm electric plant had a service life under 20 years, because REA was extending lines to (still politically potent) farmers.

Musings:

The generator would need 500RPM to cut-in, 1000RPM to charge well. The 5' blade needs 15.7'*1000= 15,000 feet per minute or 170MPH tip speed. In most of the US we must extract power from 10MPH wind (parts of N. Dakota are different). So the blade needs 1:17 leverage, camber. We see the blade tip is 5.5" chord, 3/8" thick, 3/16" average tilt. 5.5/0.1875= 29:1 leverage. While tip speed won't reach 29 times wind speed, it may indeed hit 17 times wind speed, turn 1000RPM, deliver full generator current.

A "larger size heavy-weight 6 volt generator" (in 1935) might do 30 Amps. Two large 6V batteries might store 180 amp-hours. 6 hours of steady 10MPH wind would top them off. I suspect you had to add water often, even daily when the wind was high.

180AH at 6V is 1 KWH. Taking 2 hours before dawn and 2 hours after dusk, you can run 250 Watts of light to battery discharge, or 100W for 4 hours without any great strain.

(I use 28 KHW per day, I 'need' 28 of these things.)

12V operation (to use modern Chevy/Yota/Onda junk and RV lamps) is just the same.

[Kearns892]

Wow, thanks for the bump. Interesting read...

I'm looking at majoring in an engineering field for my undergrad. I'm really interested in working with energy systems, particularly solar based. Any suggestions Mr. Keen?

[joegagan]

i know very little about energy, but that does not stop me from having lots of onions  err i mean opinions.

i have been listening to gale banks of banks turbo fame.  his track record in making power efficiently is legendary. of late, he works with the DOD to make hummers and other military vehicles make really good power on the least amount of fuel possible since in the field, getting fuel to the guys amounts to the equiv of 50 dollars a gallon or more.

to the point : gale is very optimistic about the recent developments in growing algae based biofuel, grown in between sheets of glass or other material. this can be done vertically, so land use becomes less of an issue.

[runmikeyrun]

the original link to RG's bio page is broken, here's the updated one:

http://www.visualsound.net/index.php/resources/rg_keen

You're the man R.G. 

[Kearns892]

Thanks for the new link. I was bummed to find the old one broken. Very good to associate a face to the name!

[pinkjimiphoton]

he's a gentleman, a scholar, undoubtedly one hell of a musician, ultimate guru, and friend to all...


and this page is on the archive still...lol

http://web.archive.org/web/20090310182242/http://www.visualsound.net/rgkeen.html

[digi2t]

he's a gentleman, a scholar, undoubtedly one hell of a musician, ultimate guru, and friend to all...


and this page is on the archive still...lol

http://web.archive.org/web/20090310182242/http://www.visualsound.net/rgkeen.html

I second that emotion, whole heartedly. And to any that may have ever taken his advice, observations, comments, etc. the wrong way, well, don't. It's mearly his way of encouraging one to read more, think more, try more, and just plain think outside of the box. After all, "can't" is just another four letter word.

Thanks R.G.!

Dino

[R.G.]

I'm looking at majoring in an engineering field for my undergrad. I'm really interested in working with energy systems, particularly solar based. Any suggestions Mr. Keen?

I wish I had good leads for you, but I'm a couple of decades out of date on the ongoing research.

Probably the biggest thing is to get heavily into power conversion. Whatever energy systems happen, it is most unlikely that what comes out will be a convenient voltage and/or current, so it will need conversion, and good, efficient conversion. The big advances in solar will come from a few areas: semiconductor physics, for better direct conversion of light to electricity, and mechanical/electromagnetic physics for better working fluid/electromagnetic generation. Maybe the organic chemists and DNA splicers will save us with gene-spliced algae that - um, excrete  hydrocarbons. There's some work going on there.

Well, there is direct nuclear to thermal and MHD, and possibly some day we'll get the fusion bottles to over unity power gain, but I wouldn't bet a career on them unless I had the patience to do a research/academic career. I didn't, but you might.

However the energy comes out, it will not be a 50/60Hz and a convenient voltage. It'll be at low voltage and high current or high voltage/low current, and the fight will be to keep as much of it as you can and still be able to drive a standard power grid. An even bigger lurking issue in the power field is engineering economics and the issues of embedded energy, capital cost, development payback, and payback periods. And doing that on a schedule, to meet a cost and investment target, and make the thing salable so the chumps... er, consumers like me  can buy it.

I'm really encouraged by the work that - LANL? - did, getting 20KW out of a 20 foot mirror and a Stirling engine. I live in central Texas and we have rather a lot of sunlight. Being able to use the sun to air condition is a very natural fit to our needs, and 20KW is about what my house needs as a peak load. I'd be very tempted to do the math and figure out payout periods, MTBF and repair/maintenance costs on something like that. A house with it's own electrical plant that would last 20 years would be a great thing to have - if you will be around to see a personal profit on the capital investment before the rest of the house wears out or you move and don't care about it any more.

But I'm wandering again. Want a career in energy and solar? They're going to need power conversion specialists.

[rockhorst]

@Kearns892
There's a big buzz coming up on solar energy in physics and chemistry research (and even biology). There are a few horses that people are betting on. I applied for a Phd position researching 'colloidial quantum dots' for solar cells a while back. Interesting stuff, sadly, I didn't get the job . But that might all be 'too fundamental' for you, don't know what you're majoring in (electrical engineering?).

[MoltenVoltage]

he's a gentleman, a scholar, undoubtedly one hell of a musician, ultimate guru, and friend to all...

I talked to him at NAMM and he is a master of obfuscation as well as an unparalleled rhetorician, not to mention a funny mofo!

[pinkjimiphoton]

he's got chutzpah, he does, yes he does...

lol

man...to have one quarter of that brain in my head...

[Paul Marossy]

I like to refer to him now and then as "Commander" Keen, but I take it that reference only has meaning for those of us who ever used a 286 AT!

I learned AutoCAD on an 8088 and a "faster" 286 machine!

[Kearns892]

@rockhorst

I actually attend a liberal arts college, one of the few in the nation with an engineering program albeit a limited one, but I knew that when I applied. Since we are small, our engineering program is broken up only into a few subcateorgies that are relatively broad in scope with the intent that students attend graduate programs for a more focused learning afterward. I am trying to couple that with a second degree in politics as I know whatever solutions engineers come up with to solve our energy crisis, we will need people that understand the technology and the political realities (and yes unfortunately limitations) to actually implementing it. I am still young and early in the process. Just trying to keep many options open for now and explore different paths.

@RG
Always looking for input from people much further down the road than me, thanks RG 

[panterafanatic]

Being an incoming freshman at a college for Applied Physics/Pre-engineering in a dual-degree program I understand Kearns concerns and have the same feelings. I was hoping to do power supplies but wasn't sure how to implement it into green energy, I guess I do now.  Thank you R.G.

[Enzo]

I just looked at the picture, that can't be him.  Why he looks almost... friendly.