{"id":437,"date":"2011-06-09T09:18:32","date_gmt":"2011-06-09T09:18:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/?p=437"},"modified":"2012-03-02T14:19:15","modified_gmt":"2012-03-02T19:19:15","slug":"all-hes-saying-is-give-wisdom-a-chance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/2011\/06\/09\/all-hes-saying-is-give-wisdom-a-chance\/","title":{"rendered":"All He’s Saying is Give Wisdom a Chance"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Hugh

Hugh Stoll \u201989 bought this 1920s-era hydroelectric dam on the Rocky River near Pittsboro, North Carolina, in 2005 and has been restoring it ever since. Stoll is also one of the partners in the company that owns and manages the solar installation at EMU.<\/p><\/div>\n

AFTER CLAMBERING DOWN a rickety iron ladder and inching across a slippery concrete ledge, Hugh Stoll \u201989<\/strong> arrives at the business end of his latest brainchild: a new hydroelectric turbine for his dam on the Rocky River in Pittsboro, North Carolina.<\/p>\n

Unscrewing a metal cover to show off the guts of his new contraption \u2013 conceived and built entirely from scratch, save for a blade design borrowed from the University of Idaho \u2013 Hugh talks hydropower at a mile a minute: \u201cthrust bearings\u201d and \u201cbutterfly valves\u201d and \u201cfriction loss\u201d and other terms and concepts sailing over the layman\u2019s head.<\/p>\n

Hugh goes back up the ladder into the powerhouse, still holding forth rapid-fire on the intricacies of his operation, as he opens up the new turbine control panel. He jumps from \u201csynchronous generation\u201d to \u201cpositive load,\u201d then describes the use of a \u201cdynamometer\u201d to create a \u201ctorque curve\u201d that has some relation to the coiled thicket of black, yellow, red and blue wires snaking this way and that inside the control panel he engineered.<\/p>\n

In the background, his trusty old 1909 GE generator \u2013 the dam\u2019s real workhorse, to be supplemented by the new turbine \u2013\u00a0hums along gently. When the Rocky River\u2019s up and running fast, Hugh\u2019s dam sends enough electricity into the grid to power 90 to 100 homes.<\/p>\n

Hugh, who lives in Harrisonburg, Virginia, takes periodic work trips to the dam, a few days here, a few days there, fixing this, replacing that, tinkering with more ambitious projects like the new turbines. There\u2019s no shortage of things to do.
\nThe dam, built in 1922, was \u201chighly neglected\u201d when he and his brother, Craig, bought it in 2005. Ever since, he\u2019s been trying to get things back to shipshape. He claims he\u2019s not an expert; he\u2019s learned as he\u2019s gone along, seeking out mentors, figuring out who can help him when he\u2019s stumped.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou piddle around with stuff and find out what works,\u201d says Hugh. \u201cIt\u2019s just really simple. There\u2019s not a whole lot to it.\u201d
\nAnd Hugh loves simplicity. He relates a parable from personal experience:<\/p>\n

Some years ago, he chaperoned a group of students from Eastern Mennonite High School visiting the \u201csolar decathlon\u201d on the National Mall in Washington DC, a showcase of the most advanced and innovative solar-powered houses in the world. Impressive, yes, but the approach felt wrong. The houses\u2019 complicated electrical systems would cost tens of thousands of dollars to build and require an engineering degree to really understand \u2013 far, far too complicated an arrangement for Hugh\u2019s liking. While the houses at the decathlon were perhaps sustainable in some narrow sense, they were kind of missing the broader point.
\n\u201c[We] should talk about wisdom, not sustainability,\u201d he declares, tugging at his long beard, cut in a style evocative of the Amish men in his ancestry.<\/p>\n

\"Hugh

Vaguely resembling a flying saucer, the 1909 General Electric generator behind Hugh Stoll makes much of the dam\u2019s electricity. During periodic work trips from his home in Harrisonburg, Hugh has been building two supplemental turbines from scratch.<\/p><\/div>\n

Wisdom is an expansive concept, he continues. Simplicity is part of wisdom. Average everyday people should be able to understand wise things. Seeking others\u2019 talents, as he\u2019s tried to do when troubleshooting at the dam, is part of wisdom. And living sustainably is an inevitable side effect of living wisely. Wise people don\u2019t poison their own wells, he says. Wise people take care of what they have.<\/p>\n

Pragmatism figures into all of this, too. The ecological effects of damming rivers makes hydropower a controversial source of renewable energy, Hugh acknowledges, but perfect can\u2019t be the enemy of good.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur culture has an insatiable appetite for electricity, and you have to get it from somewhere,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

After graduating from EMC with a degree in Biblical studies and theology, Hugh and his wife, Kathy Hilty Stoll \u201989, moved to Tacoma, Washington, where Kathy earned a degree in occupational therapy. Hugh worked as an electrician in Tacoma, and then in Arizona, the couple\u2019s next stop after Kathy earned her degree.<\/p>\n

In 1996, by then with two children in tow, the Stolls moved to eastern Washington, near the town of Kettle Falls. Hugh became a stay-at-home dad at first, while he built the family a simple, no-frills straw bale house within eyeshot of Canada. Good insulation, careful design and a wood-burning Russian stove were plenty to keep the house comfortable.<\/p>\n

In Washington, Hugh\u2019s love of whitewater kayaking first connected him with hydroelectricity. He got to know a man who owned a dam on one of Hugh\u2019s favorite rivers, and before long, he began helping his new friend with electrical projects there.<\/p>\n

When Hugh\u2019s father, Dan (electrical service supervisor at EMU for 12 years) died suddenly of a heart attack in 2002, the Stolls \u2013 then with four kids \u2013 sold the house in Washington and moved back to Harrisonburg. After the move, Hugh kept his eye on hydropower industry journals, saw an ad for the dam in Pittsboro, and soon enough, had bought a hydropower plant of his own.
\nHugh\u2019s foray into hydroelectricity has gotten him interested in other forms of renewable energy.<\/p>\n

Last year, he built a large solar panel array in the back yard of his family\u2019s home just north of town. He\u2019s now a partner with Secure Futures, the solar energy company that owns and manages EMU\u2019s recent solar installation on the library roof. And lately he\u2019s begun dabbling in wind power. Hugh and Craig are fixing up a 100-year-old wind turbine for fun, and he\u2019s toying with the idea of launching some sort of wind energy development.<\/p>\n

And one more thing \u2013 Hugh\u2019s been dreaming lately about building another house. He\u2019s been doodling plans, considering sites, thinking about design. Or even better, he\u2019s dreaming about a group of houses, connecting with other like-minded, people interested in building and living together. Living simply. Living sustainably. Living wisely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

AFTER CLAMBERING DOWN a rickety iron ladder and inching across a slippery concrete ledge, Hugh Stoll \u201989 arrives at the business end of his latest brainchild: a new hydroelectric turbine for his dam on the Rocky River in Pittsboro, North Carolina. Unscrewing a metal cover to show off the guts of his new contraption \u2013 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":81,"featured_media":440,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,8],"tags":[76,183],"class_list":["post-437","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-magazine","category-spring-2011","tag-hugh-stoll","tag-sustainability","issues-spring-2011"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/81"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":930,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437\/revisions\/930"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/440"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emu.edu\/now\/crossroads\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}