Forrest "Woody" Stoddard, Wind Pioneer

Just the other day I'd just gotten the word that Woody was seriously ill.  I was hoping to get an address to contact him via some mutual friends but unfortunately he has passed away.   Obituary & Photo

Woody was an American pioneer in the field of wind energy.  His early work as a graduate student with the wind program at the University of Massachusetts and subsequent work throughout all these years in the wind industry helped to provide a base for the wind technology we see in action today.

The UMass Wind Turbine WF-1, A Retrospective - Renewable Energy Research Laboratory
Wind Turbine Dismantled to be Displayed in Smithsonian - Daily Collegian

I'll always remember him as the brilliant, driven and fun guy I used to work for at his firm, Pioneer Wind, back in the 1980s.  In particular, I'll remember his teasing me on my elementary math skills when working on a blade balancing project.  My response was essentially, "Hey, it still worked."  I also enjoyed our travels in his beat-up truck to the exotic towns of Chicopee and Springfield, MA in search of various pieces of power equipment for the shop. 

My main tasks at Pioneer Wind were to modifying some wind turbine blades Woody received as part of a severance package from U.S. Windpower (one of the pioneering companies in wind farm development) and to help set up his prototyping shop.  Woody was the chief designer for U.S. Windpower but somehow got sideways with the powers that be and it ended in a negotiated split.

I never spoke with Woody about the specifics of the break from U.S. Windpower but if I was a guessing man, I'd guess they might have been in line with some of the observations of Dale Osborn who was President of that firm in the late 80s and early 90s.

"...(1) the owners never understood the complexity of the technology, (2) they made a fatal mistake in purchasing speculative inventory, (3) the board knew only what the CEO told them, and (4) their focus on economic gain versus quality engineering was the death knell." - Dale Osborn, Wind Power Pioneer Review - Wind Powering America

After further on-line research, I did find a quote from Woody on U.S. Windpower.

"The most successful [American] company, U.S. Windpower, has succeeded not because of aerospace engineering expertise, but by the sheer volume of failure statistics on many hundreds of early machines." - Kenetech Windpower (U.S. Windpower) Citations in "Wind Energy Comes of Age"

Those blades were amazingly light in construction for the time.  As I recall, they were about 75 pounds and about 20 feet long.  The construction was by another UMass graduate named Ted Van Dusen who went on to make racing shells and kayaks at Van Dusen Racing Boats which is a division of Composite Engineering in Concord, MA.  It appears that Woody continued to work with Ted over the years.

DOE Project for Reaction Injection Molded Windmill Blade Utilizes Polyurethane RIM System from Bayer Material Science - Bayer RIM Molding  (Sept 2005)

"'The mature cost per blade is expected to be about one-third the cost of current blade technology, and at 300 pounds, the blade is also expected to be about one-third the weight of present blades this size and have higher stiffness,' said Stoddard, who points out that the weight reduction resulting from the proposed design will reduce not only blade costs and loads, but also loads and costs throughout the remainder of the turbine."

The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) announced Woody's lifetime achievement award the day he died.  Hopefully he was notified of this award well before the official announcement.

U.S. Wind Energy Industry Honors Forrest (Woody) Stoddard with Lifetime Achievement Award - AWEA

A good guy who died far too young.  He'll be remembered and missed.

Forrest "Woody" Stoddard, Wind Pioneer

Just the other day I'd just gotten the word that Woody was seriously ill.  I was hoping to get an address to contact him via some mutual friends but unfortunately he has passed away.   Obituary & Photo

Woody was an American pioneer in the field of wind energy.  His early work as a graduate student with the wind program at the University of Massachusetts and subsequent work throughout all these years in the wind industry helped to provide a base for the wind technology we see in action today.

The UMass Wind Turbine WF-1, A Retrospective - Renewable Energy Research Laboratory
Wind Turbine Dismantled to be Displayed in Smithsonian - Daily Collegian

I'll always remember him as the brilliant, driven and fun guy I used to work for at his firm, Pioneer Wind, back in the 1980s.  In particular, I'll remember his teasing me on my elementary math skills when working on a blade balancing project.  My response was essentially, "Hey, it still worked."  I also enjoyed our travels in his beat-up truck to the exotic towns of Chicopee and Springfield, MA in search of various pieces of power equipment for the shop. 

My main tasks at Pioneer Wind were to modifying some wind turbine blades Woody received as part of a severance package from U.S. Windpower (one of the pioneering companies in wind farm development) and to help set up his prototyping shop.  Woody was the chief designer for U.S. Windpower but somehow got sideways with the powers that be and it ended in a negotiated split.

I never spoke with Woody about the specifics of the break from U.S. Windpower but if I was a guessing man, I'd guess they might have been in line with some of the observations of Dale Osborn who was President of that firm in the late 80s and early 90s.

"...(1) the owners never understood the complexity of the technology, (2) they made a fatal mistake in purchasing speculative inventory, (3) the board knew only what the CEO told them, and (4) their focus on economic gain versus quality engineering was the death knell." - Dale Osborn, Wind Power Pioneer Review - Wind Powering America

After further on-line research, I did find a quote from Woody on U.S. Windpower.

"The most successful [American] company, U.S. Windpower, has succeeded not because of aerospace engineering expertise, but by the sheer volume of failure statistics on many hundreds of early machines." - Kenetech Windpower (U.S. Windpower) Citations in "Wind Energy Comes of Age"

Those blades were amazingly light in construction for the time.  As I recall, they were about 75 pounds and about 20 feet long.  The construction was by another UMass graduate named Ted Van Dusen who went on to make racing shells and kayaks at Van Dusen Racing Boats which is a division of Composite Engineering in Concord, MA.  It appears that Woody continued to work with Ted over the years.

DOE Project for Reaction Injection Molded Windmill Blade Utilizes Polyurethane RIM System from Bayer Material Science - Bayer RIM Molding  (Sept 2005)

"'The mature cost per blade is expected to be about one-third the cost of current blade technology, and at 300 pounds, the blade is also expected to be about one-third the weight of present blades this size and have higher stiffness,' said Stoddard, who points out that the weight reduction resulting from the proposed design will reduce not only blade costs and loads, but also loads and costs throughout the remainder of the turbine."

The American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) announced Woody's lifetime achievement award the day he died.  Hopefully he was notified of this award well before the official announcement.

U.S. Wind Energy Industry Honors Forrest (Woody) Stoddard with Lifetime Achievement Award - AWEA

A good guy who died far too young.  He'll be remembered and missed.