Bill Stein, Research Fellow

Bill Stein's career in wind power has spanned over 30 years, starting with a student project at Clark University where he designed and built a 12 ft diameter, 3-bladed wind turbine that drove a modified car alternator. After working at Natural Power Inc., a wind instrumentation company and a founding member of the American Wind Energy Association, Bill started his own wind power company, which manufactured 8 and 15 kW residential-sized wind turbines. He worked briefly at MIT's Fusion Energy Laboratory, but returned to wind power through the RERL and earned a master's degree in Mechanical Engineering. His master's thesis focused primarily on hybrid power systems and power electronics for variable speed diesel engines. Bill continued his work at the RERL at a staff research engineer for several years, until he left to hone his skills in the design of instrumentation and controls at Yankee Environmental Systems. There he developed numerous instruments with embedded microcontrollers for meteorology and industry. Coming back to the RERL in 2005, Bill returned to his first professional passion of wind power, where his current work is in the support of the wind data logging network and the LIDAR. In his spare time, Bill has developed a novel (patent pending) wind sensor. Read all about it at www.etesian-tech.com.

Contact Information

Bill Stein, MS
Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Department
160 Governor's Drive
University of Massachusetts
Amherst, MA 01003 USA

Office: (413) 577-2139
Fax: (413) 577-1301
wstein@ecs.umass.edu