Where there's a wind there's a way: David and Jan Blittersdorf of NRG Systems

Vermont Business Magazine, May 01, 2005 by Marcel, Joyce

Wind like oil, is free. It's the liar hardware that costs. As oil production costs rise and we rapidly approach what experts call peak oil" - the point at which world-wide oil production is maxed out alternative energy industries like wind and solar can expect a boom. And NRG Systems, Vermont's home-grown wind company, is ready.

NRG - get it? - in Hinesburg manufactures "wind assessment technology." This includes the instruments that measure the wind, the towers that get the instruments up to where the wind is, the loggers that collect the data, and the software that analyzes the data. NRG products can be found everywhere from Alaska and the poles to the scorching deserts of the Middle East.

"Wind is the fuel," said David Blittersdorf, the inventor and engineer who founded NRG, served as its CEO for many years, and recently demoted himself so his wife, Jan Blittersdorf, could run the company. "You have to know how much there is. That's the only thing you can take to the bank. No one will finance a wind farm without the best data. So we're the first thing that anybody putting in a wind turbine has to do."

For those who don't closely follow energy news, the idea that the world will soon reach its peak in oil production may be startling. But no matter which side of the political fence you sit on, there is rapidly growing support for the idea that peak oil is closing in on us, and that within our lifetime, there will be no place to go but down.

According to the US Geological Survey, the only question about "the big rollover" is in what year oil demand will outstrip production capacity. Most of those. willing to predict say the time will be sometime between now and 2020 well within most of our lifetimes.

"Most people don't know that this crisis is coming," David said. "But look at what exponential growth means. We've been growing our energy usage exponentially. There has to be a stopping point. And energy is the key that ties everything together. Food is tied to energy. Human rights are tied to energy. If we don't have this stuff, everything starts falling apart."

When peak oil is reached, it will become a seller's market. Prices will rise as we're seeing now - and an expensive and potentially dangerous competition for oil, especially between the developed nations of Europe, plus America and Japan, and the rapidly developing ones of China and India, will commence.

At that point, alternative sources of energy and energy conservation will become essential.

To prepare for the coming crisis, the Blittersdorfs just created an extremely energy-efficient new, $7.8 million, 46,000-square-foot, Adirondack lodgestyle building in Hinesburg, a town so rural that one of the other businesses there is a pony farm. Oddly enough, the land on which they chose to build turned out to be fairly windless; only one large wind turbine rises above the complex. Instead, a $500,000 army of solar panels provides so much energy that it cost only $4,000 to heat the building this winter. The new building, designed by William Maclay Architects and Planners, won the state's highest architectural award, the Honor Award for Excellence in Architecture from the Vermont Chapter of the American Institute of Architects.

The world-wide market for wind energy stands today at about $10 billion and is expected to grow rapidly The wind assessment market is $30 million of that $10 billion. Privately-owned NRG's market share is between 50 percent and 60 percent of that. NRG had sales of $16.4 million last year and expects to soon double that figure. It has 45 employees.

"Our little market is a very critical part of the niche," David said. "Like Haliburton is to the oil industry, if you don't mind the analogy, NRG is to the wind industry. Haliburton makes all the measuring instruments for oil wells. We develop all our own products and we're leading the industry with the products we develop."

Because of the aesthetics of wind people either think the huge turbines are mysteriously beautiful or destructive to pristine environments - wind is still controversial in Vermont. The state has one operating commercial wind farm and several more in various stages of consideration. But wind is an important energy source in states like California and around the world, NRG exports to 110 countries.

"I think NRG is a fascinating company," said Robert Ide, Director of Energy Efficiency for the Department of Public Service. "Vermont is lucky to have NRG here. It's a great example of a business that does business all over the world and brings some of those dollars back to Hinesburg."

David Blittersdorf, 48, the windobsessed founder of NRG, is a genial teddy bear of a man, tall. and round and cuddly, with curly hair that is starting to turn gray. A born engineer, he remembers phone numbers by adding digits; for example, he remembered the suffix 2836 because two and eight equal ten and three and six equal nine.

His wife, Jan Blittersdorf, 45, is also tall, with a calm, soothing, earnest presence. To her husband's amazement, she has such a good head for figures that she remembers all her credit card numbers. The couple have been together since college and have been married since 1983. They are each others' biggest fans and supporters. They are comfortable people to be around. They laugh easily and often frequently at themselves. They have two children, Alyssa, who is studying art at Alfred University, and Evan, who is in high school.