Today, the convention center issued reduced price tickets so that local people, students, and journalists could see what the show is all about. This meant the RP Machine booth did less conversation with interested clients who came by previously and did more explaining to interested people. We had a couple of student activists, a graduate student doing a thesis paper, and many locals who were very interested in the Alpha Workholding Perma-Electromagnets. It was still very fun and interesting, but slightly slower.
Day 4- W
Today I got to enjoy an early morning speech from George W. Bush. His speech was very interesting, he talked about being a president, his new book, and how he would not bash Obama (he said he had felt it enough in his presidency and respects the position too much) but his main focus was on wind energy. He discussed what he did for Texas in wind and how far Texas has come under his successor. In fact, if Texas were its own country, it would be the 6th largest producer of wind power. Although, he did point out that the most unharnessed wind comes from Washington DC (jokingly). After wards I went back to work at the show helping to promote some work holding and hoisting electromagnets along with gear cutting machinery. I also met a very interesting guy who used electricity from off hours of wind power to power hydrolysis, then combining the H2 with power plant effluent CO2 to make a synthetic version of gasoline and diesel– it was very cool.
George W
George W
Day 3
Today I spent most of my day in the RP booth watching the guys sell their perma-electromagnets and gear cutting equipment. When all the RP employees were tied up I even got some solo experience talking to some customers and reciting the lines I heard the others say many times. I even brought in a potential customer to the booth that I met when we split a cab fare to the convention center (and I ain’t even getting paid for this). While I spent much of the day in the RP booth, I did get a little over an hour to walk around and scope out the other booths. I spent a little time in the small wind pavilion, which had some interesting concepts for personal windpower for those who want to power their own home. I also talked to a few engineering consulting companies that do a lot of fieldwork in windpower, biofuels, geothermal, and solar energy; companies I wouldn’t mind working for in a few years. I got the chance to ask them for any pointers they could offer to a college bound engineering student. They were very insightful.
Some pics and videos:
small wind applications
A funny looking personal wind turbine
Internals of a large-scale turbine
AWEA day 2
Today was a little less crazy than yesterday’s setup. I spent most of the day in the booth, watching RP Machine salesmen and engineers talk to potential customers about their products. I was able to see how people talk business and pick up on some of their marketing strategies. I did notice one marketing strategy that must work because every big company was utilizing it… the beer tap on the booth, it definitely brought out some “interested” customers. I also got a couple of good opportunities to see the fully set up booths and see the new cutting edge of wind power. I saw some really interesting ideas from flex rotor shafts, to new offshore platforms, to home based mini turbines.
Some pics:
A small model of an super sustainable village of power generation. They utilize a grid that connects windpower, PV solar, and hydroelectric power together. Also outside the left of the picture they used a tree solar panel setup. I have no idea what that means but it looked cool.
an offshore windpower installation diagram
New generator technology where there is no gearbox to reduce mechanical parts that can fail. Its a rotor shaft free floating in the generator
an above view of less than 1/4 of the AWEA convention
First Day in Dallas, TX
After touring the RP Machine office and production lines earlier this week I was excited to travel to Dallas today. I woke up at 6:45 to get on a plane and fly to Dallas. We arrived, checked into the hotel, ate a quick lunch, then headed over to the convention center where booth construction was already underway from an outsourced company. For the rest of the afternoon and evening, we worked to set up the booth with a small amount of time to look around. Some of these setups are incredible! Companies spend large amounts of money on the booths. I am excited to get to really look tomorrow during the exclusive vendors only opening. Here are some pictures from today:
This is a slewing bearing taller than me to control the pitch of the blades on a turbine. This is an example of a product that could be built using an RP Machine gasher
HUGE new 4 generator technology by Clipper
A glimpse from the top of the RP Machine booth over towards GE. A HUGE rotor cap on display too
RP Machine Booth
