Rm. 116B,
Office Phone Number: 806 651 2296
Mobile # 806 674 1502
Cell # 806 690 5270
E-mail kstarcher
I started
as an undergraduate assistant in 1976 for Dr. Vaughn Nelson. When AEI
was
formed in 1977, I was one of the student slaves. I have been here ever
since.
During these 30 years, we have installed more than 65 small renewable
systems
at our test sites (Nance Ranch, field tests in Borger, Tulia and Canyon
City
Well fields, the Wind Test Center, north of the WTAMU campus, and USDA,
Bushland, TX) as well as helping industry in California sites near Palm
Springs, wind farms here in Texas and assisting with airfoil/blade
design for
many others. We are collecting wind data all over our State, and have
helped
companies/agencies with met tower maintenance and installation in
I have had the great pleasure to
travel to Jamaica, China (5 times), South Africa, Korea, Germany,
Brazil
(Manaus, Rio de Janeiro, and Sao Paulo), Thailand, Japan (3 times),
Costa Rica,
Chile and all over Texas and the USA. I have learned to program
computers and
data loggers, collected and analyze data for long term projects and
high speed
data for short term tests, produced templates for blade manufacturers
to test
new thin airfoils, coordinated student/staff schedules, examined modal
vibrations of wind turbine blades (learning from Rich Osgood of NREL),
collected the first flow visualization images of blades from operating
wind
turbines (Dr. David Eggleston was the lead there), manufactured VAWT
joint
fillets (Dr. Woody Stoddard taught us everything) for 34 m vertical
axis test
bed, and conducted thin airfoil blade tests (with Bruce Andrews).
( ) The
people in the parenthesis are the main forces behind each project.
I
have worked with lots of people
over the years, students, faculty and foreign interns. A comprehensive
25 year
look at AEI is in the works and should be finished before the next 25
years
have flown past. Each person has left a little bit of new knowledge and
hopefully taken away more than they left. Now, as Director of AEI, I
will see
that it follows the path charted this last 1/4 century to make
renewables more
attractive to our world.
Anything
to do with space interests me, lots of books on moon exploration and
astronautics are in my bookshelf. The latest MARS lander
Spirit/Opportunity is especially interesting as I have my name on the
DVD's
mounted to the lander frames, part of the
Planetary
Society effort. I have a soft spot for minerals too, keeping a large
collection
of rock eggs that I have collected from all over the world on trips.
I have a computer near me at all
times. I have
worked with lots of systems and the main claim to fame is that of the 5
systems
in the Smithsonian display on personal computers in
I
get to play each day doing different jobs, climbing, welding,
electrical work,
computers, getting answers for visitors to AEI, traveling and writing,
planning
future research, budgeting how to pay for it and the State PAYS me too!
It is a
great place to work and Canyon is the best place in
I
share my home with my lovely wife Madeleine Tainton,
an artist, teacher, videographer, baker
and cat
cushion.
We share info on our public
page. Son Ramsey is now in the Great Northwest of the
I
am a dedicated Robert A. Heinlein fan, have all his paperbacks and
constantly
upgrade to hardbacks when I can find them. I am a die hard, bleed
AND A SPECIAL WELCOME HOME TO
COACH JIM ZORN !!!!.
MS 1995, WTAMU, Engineering Tech
BS 1980, WTSU, Physics/Computer
Science
Vaughn Nelson and
Vaughn Nelson, Earl Gilmore and
Kenneth Starcher,
INTRODUCTION TO WIND ENERGY, AEI, Report 94-2, September 1994, 39 pgs.
F.S. Stoddard,
V.C. Nelson, B.C. Andrews, and
K.L. Starcher, "Atmospheric Testing of a Special Purpose HAWT Airfoil
Family," EWEC Conference,
2000 WTAMU Clarence Thompson Staff
Excellence
Award
Board of Directors, American Wind
Energy
Association (AWEA) 2002-2003
Individual Member of the Year, 2005
The Planetary Society
The Artemis Foundation