By Marshall King, Truth Staff
mking@etruth.com
GOSHEN -- Evan Bontrager was reading "Wired" magazine in 2005 when he made a connection that sparked a new company.
Now he's chasing after customers who can use a GHT.
That's a Gorlov Helical Turbine, a device that spins in moving water or wind to create electricity.
Bontrager is president of Lucid Energy Technologies LLC, which formed in March 2007 and is affiliated with Terra Group (formerly Nappanee Window) and GCK Technology Inc.
GCK had the rights to the turbine design, which Alexander Gorlov, now retired from Northeastern University, invented in 1996. After seeing the article about the turbine shaped more like a DNA strand than a water wheel, Bontrager contacted GCK to see if it needed help manufacturing the turbines.
"When I learned they didn't have a business plan, I offered that too," he said.
That led to a partnership and Lucid being able to manufacture the turbine components on an aluminum extrusion machine in a spacious factory on the south side of Goshen.
The turbine that had gotten stuck in academia is making its way into the marketplace. The company shipped its first one to Australia. Another one headed to Taiwan got delayed by budget issues there.
"We're sending proposals out weekly," Bontrager said. Most of them are going overseas, where moving water such as rivers, streams and tides is governed by less stringent procedures and regulations.
"The rest of the world understands hydropower is green and the most predictable form of power available," Bontrager said.
In the United States, the move from using water just to grind grain to create electricity created a new set of issues. Dams often disrupted rivers and the lives of animals and humans near them.
"This is a new type of hydropower," said Gina Leichty, spokeswoman for Terra Group.
Lucid is installing a turbine close to home, in part for research and development. In mid-2007, the Elkhart County Park Board approved installing a turbine at Bonneyville Mill. Equipment went in a few weeks ago and over the next six months, the company will tweak the turbine to make it permanent by the fall.
That's when water will flow through the turbine, which will spin vertically, not horizontally. The twist in the design makes the turbine efficient whichever way the water flows. That makes it potentially applicable in areas where tides move in and out.
The design also makes the turbine environmentally friendly and less disruptive to the body of water it's in. The low-head dam allows it to be put in water one to five meters deep and moving at 1 1/2 meters a second, or about three knots.
The turbine at Bonneyville will provide electricity for the park and eventually be tied to Northern Indiana Public Service Co.'s grid, allowing Lucid to sell electricity back to NIPSCO. The single turbine at Bonneyville is a 10-kilowatt system and could produce 240 kilowatt hours/day, about enough power for 12 homes, according to Bontrager and Josh Thomas, systems specialist for the company that has four full-time employees.
Bontrager wants to help design and install systems as big as 100 megawatts in the U.S. and internationally. He would like to see one at the Goshen dam and in the Goshen Millrace. And he's hoping that when installed in urban areas, they can collect wind to create electricity.
The systems could be installed beneath bridges and in side-by-side arrays that would capture the energy of moving water.
"It allows you to convert the kinetic energy that already exists in nature. You can get a lot of electricity," he said.
And as he points, out, there's running or moving water all over the world.
He hopes the turbines can compete with coal on producing cheap energy, but for now a small system costs as much as $25,000.
"You can create a market when electricity is affordable to everybody everywhere," Thomas said, adding, "It's difficult to know what kind of impact it's going to have to pull energy out of moving currents."
Kyle Hannon, vice president of public policy for the Greater Elkhart Chamber of Commerce, said other companies locally are finding ways to use or create renewable energy opportunities.
Manchester Tank in Elkhart uses a turbine to create electricity from the heat it needs to paint its tanks. Another company is working on the same concept, he said.
Using extrusion for a new use locally helps diversify and strengthen the economy.
"It's really important to the economy to use our manufacturing know-how to make products that people need and the world needs," Hannon said.