The 120-foot windmill that towers above Bothel’s Mechanical Repair on Ocean House Road in Cape Elizabeth is only Stephen Bothel’s most visible attempt at harnessing nature to supply his energy.
For decades, Bothel has been interested in finding ways to consume less energy and use available alternatives to fossil fuels for heating and electricity.
“There is so much waste in this country,” Bothel said. If people would pay attention to how they consume energy and did simple things to cut down on that consumption, “you could make your energy dollar go further,” Bothel said.
Besides the 10,000-watt windmill that Bothel placed on his property in 1984, he has incorporated a number of energy-saving devices in his home. To heat his home he has attached a greenhouse that traps the heat from the sun during the summer and keeps the house warm; during the winter he uses an efficient wood stove.
In order to consume less energy he uses motion-sensor lights and energy-efficient light bulbs; he checks the efficiency of every appliance in the home and has got rid of his electric dryer and replaced his refrigerator.
When he was growing up Bothel remembers heating oil costing 25 cents a gallon. With prices like that the efficiency of your furnace wasn’t important, he said. But, as fuel prices go up there is a direct corollary to people’s interest in finding ways to cut energy costs, either by looking at alternative energy sources or investing in more efficient appliances or cars.
It was during the energy crisis of the late 1970s that Bothel remembers visiting Martha’s Vineyard and walking under a large array of windmills at a wind farm that was on the island then. It was not long after that, around 1980, that Bothel started seriously researching the possibility of buying a windmill.
A lot of people show interest in solar and wind power, but Bothel said he has been involved in them to a much higher level than most.
“I went one step further. … I’m doing something,” he said.
In 1984 he bought the machine for $20,000 from a company in Portsmouth that is no longer there. The windmill is tied to the house and supplies enough electricity for day-to-day uses. Whatever electricity is not used gets sold on the power grid.
It wasn’t until recently that Bothel calculated the total amount of electricity the machine has created since he installed it. The results were discouraging, but Bothel said he wasn’t surprised when he discovered that in the past 21 years of spinning in the wind, the machine has produced only $7,500 worth of electricity.
He wasn’t surprised because he has always known he doesn’t have a prime location for a windmill. When he was looking into buying the windmill, a survey put the wind speed at his location at around 7 or 8 mph, about the speed that the windmill needs to start spinning. But, Bothel said, “I wanted one anyway.”
If Bothel had a better location where he could gauge the wind at around 15 mph he estimates he would have created $65,000 worth of electricity by now. He said cutting down the trees around the windmill would increase the amount of wind and increase the amount of electricity produced. “But, I really don’t want to cut down the nice oak trees,” he said.
Using wind power as an energy source has become a viable option, but many of the criticisms that people still have Bothel said aren’t really a concern. Like the fact that people say windmills are a danger to birds.
Bothel has never found a dead bird at the base of his windmill. On the contrary, “this machine has raised more (birds) than it has ever killed,” Bothel said. For years a family of starlings have lived in the tail of his windmill, which is a hollow rectangular metal pipe.
He said he hasn’t seen them yet this year, which would be a first, but he said they picked a pretty nice spot. Since the windmill moves to face the direction the wind is coming from, the starlings will never have to worry about rain coming into their nest or harsh winds.
As for the argument that wind farms are visual blights, Bothel said that in fact wind farms can be marketed for tourists. Bothel points out that he has visited many wind farms in small towns that would otherwise never attract people. He also drove across the country to visit a wind farm in California 18 years ago. Other options exist as well, like the possibility of putting wind farms off the coast and out of view.
After 21 years of using the wind to supply his electricity, Bothel is now planning on harnessing the sun for his domestic use. It is a move that will hopefully bring him one step closer to his goal of being energy independent.
For the past eight or nine years Bothel has been reading about and researching an evacuated-tube solar collector, which will capture heat from the sun to heat his water for showers and washing. He will need to purchase the solar collector tubes, which will run about $3,000, but he will design and construct the rest.
Bothel enjoys working on these projects and thinks of it as a hobby. An aspect he is incorporating into his design for the solar collector is the ability to follow the sun, which he said will yield 40 percent more energy than if it was stationary.
“It’s all going to add together,” Bothel said. “Not one thing is going to fix everything. … But, it will all add up.”
The 120-foot windmill stands behind Bothel’s Mechanical Repair shop on Ocean House Road in Cape Elizabeth and supplies electricity to his home next door.Send questions/comments to the editors.
