Sue Timberlake
Sue Timberlake may work with wind, but she’s not a dreamer with her head in the clouds. Among her most admired objects? A Texas Instruments calculator and an old Hewlett Packard laser printer, both renowned for being straightforward, practical and durable.
These qualities are exactly what works in rural areas like the Highlands. Summed up in more human terms as “effective and persistent,” and you also have a good start at understanding Sue Timberlake and her organization, Cummington Wind LLC.
The path that led Timberlake to the roof of The Old Creamery Grocery in Cummington, standing next to a prototype vertical wind turbine, has shifted like the wind itself. Raised on 60 acres of protected forestry land in Westford, MA, the former health IT professional says that she was always naturally curious, and grew into a “Republican conservationist with good, old fashioned New England values.” “You take what you have and make it work for what you need,” she explained, after recalling how her mother once rebuilt a cement mixer.
Timberlake herself has an educated eye and a resourceful knack for design and engineering, saying “I see patterns pretty instinctively.” She also saw a need for an alternative power source for rural homes and businesses, and an untapped resource in the local winds. Cummington Wind became her effort to design and test a simple, affordable, vertical wind turbine system that could that could provide regular, supplemental power or back-up power during emergencies, and reduce local power demand during brownouts.
Her broader vision for the design is similarly well-grounded. “There is no reason why we can’t produce these right here in western Massachusetts.” As for demand, she explains that a wind system hybrid combined with two photovoltaic solar panels could power an entire home that is mindful of its energy use. “New England is actually an excellent climate for a system that draws solar power in the summer and wind in the winter. And to make it work, this type of system really lets you know how much energy you are squandering on a regular basis.”
Vertical wind towers, which have tall cylinders instead of traditional blades, can be turned by simple air turbulence generated by regular events like passing cars. Given the Old Creamery’s location on Route 9, and the commitment to sustainability by its owners, it made sense that the turbine occupy a place along with “Camille” the Creamery’s famous fiberglass cow. But in developing the system Timberlake quickly learned of another local resource—skilled people willing to volunteer.
Ironically, designing a simple but efficient system from readily available components is a complex process. In addition to the Creamery, a line of electricians, woodworkers and other businesses offered their help to creatively work through problems—from efficiently converting the DC to AC electricity, to storing the power, to grounding the system.“We also lucked out that the local inspector was a Navy veteran familiar with DC systems and he understood exactly what was going on. And we made sure we built the system to the utmost safety standards that we could.”
Right now, the vertical turbine atop the Creamery is likely turning, storing power in a series of donated batteries hidden underneath a storage bench made from local pine constructed and donated by a local craftsman. The power is used to run a television and computer in the Creamery’s sustainability library, and may eventually power the Old Creamery Co-op’s future office. In the years to come, Sue Timberlake’s wind systems may be running much more!
