The History of TLG Windpower and the man behind it.

I have been asked several times how I got into wind energy so I decided to create this page to kind of explain how TLG Windpower Products came to be.
I will now try to cram several years worth of information in as few words as possible.

Back when I was a kid in Augusta, KS I made a bunch of my own toys.  This was not because I didn't have any store bought toys, it was just that I enjoyed making my own toy cars, kites, (and I made some BIG kites) and I loved to play with pulleys and string.  By the time we were being shown Fulcrums and Pulleys in school I was bored stiff in class.  I had already been there and done that.  I guess I have always been the mechanical type.

I think my interest in wind power started about 1974 when we moved from the country into town.  I did some bartering with some of the neighborhood kids for a generator powered light for my Bicycle.  I got it all mounted on my bike and then found out that my mother was not going to let me ride my bike after dark.  Dang my bad luck!
So I got tired of looking at that cool little generator mounted on my back wheel of my bicycle doing nothing for me except slowing me down during the day.  I had to use it sometime. ;)

I took it off and began playing with it.  Wrapping long thin strips of rubber cut from old bicycle inter tubes around the shaft and pulling it like a rip cord to watch the bulb light up.  I set my electric race cars up on the track and hooked the wires to the track, pulled the rubber strip and watched the cars launch off the track.  That was fun to play with for a while, but when I was given a broken 20 inch Bicycle that took me a different direction.  Off came the front forks and the front wheel.  I duck taped some plastic cups to the spokes on the wheel then mounted the wheel back on so that it was running outside the forks, sticking out just one side.  I mounted the generator so it would rub on the tire and stuck all of this up on the edge of the house with the help of a cinder block.
Well it was the same back then as it is now for a new wind generator, no wind to see if it would work.  After a few days the night finally came that we had some storms coming in with wind.  The wind was blowing hard and a bolt of lighting struck something and took the lights out..  Wooohooo. The house was dark but my bedroom was lit up like a church house.. 
So it worked, but not good enough.  I realized that it needed more power, so I asked around until I found a 26" bike and made the same setup and it worked much better than the 20 inch wheel did.
I played with it like this for a few days until my neighbor replaced his battery in his car.  I ask if I could have the old battery and he ask me why I wanted it.  I showed him my fancy state of the art wind powered generator and he set me up with everything I needed, including this cool little electronic piece that he called a rectifier diode.  I later learned it was a "blocking diode" and the key to not loading a generator unit it was up to speed.  So my setup now turned real easy most of the time and made some pretty decent power for a kids first setup. 
Shortly after the project was completed and working great, there was this pretty girl named Kim that moved into the neighborhood and I forgot all about my new creation.  That is until the wind came up one night and blew the setup off the roof and bent it all to pieces when the cinder block fell on top of the spokes.  But who cared, I wondered if Kim was home. ;)

As I grew up... well let me rephrase that, since some of you know me... After I got older. ;)  I took several different vocational course such as wood working, metal shop, small engines, auto body, auto shop, and electronic courses.  I also worked in various different fields, radio DJ, mechanic, welder, car audio design, VCR/Camcorder technician, appliance repair, live mobile DJ, heating and refrigeration, computer network administrator, etc, etc, etc.  So you can see I have a very diverse background and there isn't much I can't do.
Over the years I never passed up on any opportunity to stop and look at or work on a wind generator.  As they began to build wind farms within driving distance I was there learning anything I could from anyone I could.  Throughout my knowledge of wind generators grew dramatically from the repairs I was making on them.  Doing everything to them except making the blades themselves.  Although I studied every blade design I could get my hands on I just never took an interest in carving a blade.  When the owners of the systems I repaired were carving blades I just kept thinking there had to be a better way.

Several years ago the economy started to get really bad, so did the job market even for a jack of all trades like myself.  Needless to say I found myself unemployed and bored stiff.  I started parting out motorcycles for a living, after all a mans gotta eat.  I would buy a street bike of some kind, strip it down and then list the parts on eBay.  One day when I was finished parting and listing a bike I found that I had some time on my hands so I went back to my childhood dream and started building myself a generator to power the lights in my shop.
I had all the parts I needed laying around except the yaw bearing that I had to order and a set of blade to use.  As a model airplane pilot / builder I had plenty of wing / air foil designs in my head.  I also have a lot of friends that are engineers, so with their help and a lot of experimenting I came up with a foil that had some major torque characteristics beyond anything that I had ever seen. 
Using a sheet of Polyvinyl I made a set of blades with my foil design.  I tested them on my old 1984 Ford Ranger and was very impressed with the results.   I decided then that this design of blade would be used on my generator when it was finished.
I then got the news that my Yaw bearing that I ordered to allow my downwind unit to track the wind was not going to be here for a couple more weeks.  Hmm, what to do now..  So I thought what the heck and while listing motorcycle parts I listed the blades that I had just got done testing on eBay figuring that if they sold I could just make another set when it was closer to time for the bearing to get here.
To my surprise the blades got a bid on them within the first hours of being listed.  I sold that set and listed another set.  They too sold.  Needless to say that generator never got built and that is how the Tri-Nado was born.  A 5 foot 3-blade Polyvinyl rotor.

After about a month I found myself too busy hand shaping blades and making hubs to have the time to take motorcycles apart at all.   This "if they sell I'll just make a new set" idea I had was turning into a full time and then some job to keep up with the amount I was selling.
With everyone seeming to like the design and positive feedback coming in my next issue was to figure out a way to shape these blades faster.  That is when I came up with the idea for a vacuum jig.

Now at this point I want to give credit where credit is due, although I had a very nice working design, here is where I was blessed with a major improvement without any planning on my part.
With more and more being sold I was running behind and knew that this jig was just going to eat up time to build and cause me even more stress, so I took a moment to pray for help. 
I then started building the jig. After a few days of carving this Oak block down into a masterpiece it was done and ready for its first run.  I fired it up and made a few blades.  Every one came off the jig with a strange pitch and angle that I did not plan on.
So I scrapped that jig feeling even more stressed than I was before with the added pressure of being even more behind now.
I worked extra hard on the second one being extremely carefully while carving it to make sure every angle and curve was perfect..  When it was done I hooked the vacuum lines up to the pump and proceeded to heat the Polyvinyl to make some blades.
They too came out with the same exact angle and pitch that was not part of the plan.  It was just all wrong, or so I thought.
By this time I had spent over a week making these jigs and really needed to fill orders.  Feeling cornered and left without any options I decided to go fly these funky angled blades and see just how bad it effected them.
To my surprise that new pitch and angle that I mysteriously kept coming up with was the unforeseen key to even more power and speed than I had before.
Now with this new jig I could produce these blades at a much faster rate and that was really important to me since I was hand making my hubs.
So what I am saying is my prayer was answered right away, but I didn't realize it until I was pushed into a corner.   Little did I know there was still more to come in answer to my prayer.

The next day a good friend of mine came over and was talking to me as I was cutting, welding, and grinding the hubs.  He suggested that I contact a firm he dealt with that had a Laser Cutter.  I got in touch with them and sent them some drawing, and before I knew it I had Laser cut hubs and more time to make blades to fill orders and more time to design new ones.

While all the above stuff was going on during the day I was also putting up a website during the evenings to show my blades.  Shortly after the website was finished the phone began to ring, people had systems and they wanted to know if I had a blade that might improve what they already had.  Some even sent me their generators such as the Air 403 series, and various different DCPM motors for testing.
It was clear to me that there was a very wide spread interest in my blades because they were quickly proving to be way more powerful than any other rotor in a similar size range and to top it off they were way quieter than anything else available.

If this seems to be all running together and hard to follow.  Then you have a pretty good idea of what things were like for me back in the beginning.   Just hang with me and read on.

With the time saved by not having to make the hubs anymore I was caught up before I knew it and was able to start testing motors.
I found some of the motors needed much more power to run and it became clear that more blades were necessary to turn some of them.  That is why the Prairie Star, 5 foot 5-blade was developed.

With the Prairie Star now available some of the people seeing it were asking if I had a 6-blade unit to replace the one they had.
My reply continued to be "no" to a 6-bladed even numbered rotor.   I further stated that I would not build an even numbered unit because all the bigger commercial units that were two blade seemed to beat themselves to death.
I went as far as to state on the TLG site that I will never design or build an even numbered rotor.
Those words are still on the TLG site and will more than likely stay there as part of its heritage.  Well guess what, never say never.  After talking to some of my engineer friends, most were convinced that with TLG's unique offset design in the hub and blade bolts that there would not be an issue with multiple centers of gravity if I were to make one.
After some research and testing I found that it was true, and  TLG was now offering the rotor that made me eat crow over my statement about never designing or building an even numbered rotor.  That rotor was the Quadraflex. 4-blade rotor.

After a couple of months of having Laser cut hubs and only having to make the blades themselves in my ever perfect lightning fast jig.  I didn't think things could get any better.  That was until I got a phone call from the shop that was making my hubs.  They said they would like to see a blade and wanted to know if they could match it would I buy from them.  They said they felt they could do it but they wouldn't be using PV, they would be made out of Aircraft grade Aluminum instead.  I told them that I didn't think they could produce the curve and angle that I needed to make them work.  They wanted to try and I figured what the heck its worth a try, so I sent them a PV blade.
It wasn't too long after that they were not only making my hubs, but were making TLG design blades out of Aluminum.  These new Aluminum blades were even faster and smoother running than the PV series.
This is how the Tri-Nado, Quadraflex, and Prairie Star became the AL Series.

Now that I was no longer making the blades or hubs I was free to explore more DCPM motors and dive deep into the surplus Ametek motors.  I gathered as much information as I could all the while planning that I would soon be able to find the perfect combo of TLG blades and some DCPM motor out there to start producing a complete wind generator system to bring to the market.
Boy was I wrong.
I just couldn't stay on the project long enough.  TLGwindpower.com was now gaining rank on the search engines and TLG Windpower Products was gaining rapid popularity in the industry.
That was about the time I was contacted by a man that wishes to remain unnamed.  He was building much bigger units than TLG  had rotors for.  He was looking for a way to replace the 12 foot wooden design he was currently using.   He said the issue was he just couldn't get them made fast enough to keep up with his volume and said he would buy from me if I could come up with a good solid solution for him.
To make a very long (lack of sleep) story short,  I developed a 9 foot 1 inch rotor that easily replaced the 12 foot wooden rotors he was using.  Thus the beginning of the Tri-Nado Extreme.

The Tri-Nado Extreme brought an all new twist to the TLG rotors.  It had big wide roots that really gathered the wind and had some serious horsepower behind it.
Needless to say the Power Class Series was born.

From the design of the Extreme came a smaller faster 7 foot rotor the Tri-Nado Elite.
With these two power class rotors TLG was finding itself expanding in a whole different market.  These rotors quickly found jobs outside of the wind generator field such as running air compressors to pump air into the ground and force water up to the surface, and to circulate water in ponds since they had power to run small pumps in even the mildest of wind.

Even with the rotor line expanding rapidly there were still people the with different needs and some asking for blade systems for smaller motors, as well as replacement blades for some pre-built units they had.  I understood that part of the problem even back then was several areas would not allow a rotor larger than 5 foot to be flown.
So without going into a two page story worth of detail let me just say I went back to the drawing board and the MM Series was born.

Now while reading this it makes it sound like all of TLG's rotors were just a boom there ya go deal for me...
It wasn't that way at all.  In this story I am only given you the basics to make this story much shorter.   I left out all the different prototypes that were made for each model and series TLG has, and all the different hub designs that were tried and scraped.
While no design was a complete failure their were some that were way better than the other.  I just didn't mention in the paragraphs above the ever growing piles of Aluminum blades and steel hubs that I now have laying around from all the models TLG is now successfully offering. ;)  

Back to the story.. As TLG's rotor line grew so did my sharing of information on how to.  When I noticed I was being asked in email or on the phone the same type of questions from several different people I figured a Tips and Tricks page was needed.  That (loaded with information) page is now one of the most viewed pages in the TLG website and seems to be one of the most talked about in public amongst the people looking for ways to make their own power.
As anyone can see by the size of the TLG website which continues to grow every month I have tried to expand in the areas needed and I have taken my customers requests for information seriously.  I also found that others enjoy seeing ideas that someone else may have had while building their unit and have continued to expand the Customer Pictures page.

The Parts page came about as a form of customer service. since it seems that some areas just don't have some of the items available to build their unit so TLG now stocks and builds several different parts such as precision arbors, blocking diodes, locking collars, charge controllers, etc.  These items were added as a form of support to make things easier for you.
Shortly after the Parts page was added I started getting requests for Yaw mounts from those that didn't have the tools such as a welder to build one.  So that brought the GM#### to the TLG product line.

Now if you noticed, I haven't mentioned eBay for a while.  That is because after the website started ranking in the search engines I was so busy talking with people and helping them get their systems together that I didn't really have the time to do eBay ads.  (just as an example: there are days that I answer more than 200 email notes and can spend as much as 14 hours on the phone.)
Even though TLG didn't really have a presence so to speak on eBay there were a couple of people/companies out there attacking the TLG product line in their ads.  COOL!  I like nervous competition!
This went on for several months while I was working on the design of a new rotor that would have been named the Tri-Nado Express.  Throughout the design phase these notes from friends and customers continued to come in asking about these ads.  Once in a while I would go and look to see what was being said.  When it was just the people selling the Carbon Flubber blades OPS, I mean Carbon Fiber blades I just laughed.  But it just kept happening, and why?  Then all the sudden out of nowhere comes a wind generator company selling pine tree blades and taking pot shots at TLG's rotors like there was no tomorrow.  And these rotors were in my opinion not a safe blade to fly at all.  After one of my customers sent me one of these blade systems is when I decided enough was enough!  By this time the new rotor was almost finished and the intended name the Tri-Nado Express became the Boast Buster.  That's another story in itself and if you care to read about that you can click here. enjoy!

Something I think it is pretty strange is that some of the very same above mentioned people doing the bagging on TLG's cup design, claiming that it just couldn't work as good as their design are now trying to develop and sell their own cupped blade design.  Looks like TLG is a trend setter and clearly had the better design in the first place.
At this point I think it is safe to say that TLG has perfected the cupped design and has a far better understanding of the concepts of scooping and flushing of the air over the foils than those that have stopped bagging and started working on the cupped concept now.  I don't know about you but this sounds like a good game of Follow the Leader going on here...  And TLG has no intentions of giving up its position as the leader in the cupped concept as TLG still has designs in the works for future blades.

The TLG trademark logo:
My mother gave me the logo when I was just a kid.
Little did she know that when she placed my initials in a stacked fashion on the back of a leather belt buckle that she made for me she was actually creating the trademark logo of TLG Windpower Products..
By the way, I love you mom!

As repeat visitors of the TLG website know there has been a generator in the works for a very long time.   The reason this unit had not been released is because none of the designs has exceeded my expectations.   I said that the new generator will be like nothing the renewable energy market has seen and that is what I meant.  The new design that is in the works will be every bit of that and then some.  It looks like it will more than exceed my expectations and if it does that then it will be good enough to release to you.
Update to above paragraph 11-29-06.  The two years of waiting turned into the TLG-500 Wind Generator

On a different note there is something I want to say here.  I know I have used the word customer several times in this story but I personally don't really like the term customer.  I can only think of a couple of rotors that have been sold without any type of communication, and this communication has led to some great friendships with some people that I absolutely treasure.  So I guess it would be better said that TLG Windpower Products doesn't really have any customers.  It has thousands of friends!

Now with all of this being said I want you all to know that I stake no claims to fame nor do I claim to be an aerodynamics' genius.
TLG Windpower Products is based on honestly, and throughout the entire website there is nothing but straight forward information for you to view.  I clearly know that TLG got to where is it today by the help of some very qualified people and a lot of help and guidance from above!  And with that combination working together it proudly offers some of the quietest most powerful rotors on the planet.

So in a nutshell that's my story. ;)
Terry L. Galyon
Owner TLG Windpower Products.

Return to TLG home page