Dr. Ken
StarcherAssisstant Director: Training, Education
and Outreach
Office: Killgore Research Center, Room 116
Phone: 806-651-2295
Fax: 806-651-2733
E-mail: kstarcher@wtamu.edu
Professional Profile
Ken started as an undergraduate assistant in 1976 for Dr. Vaughn Nelson. He has been with AEI ever since it was founded 32 years ago. He has worked as both a Director and Assistant Director. During this time he has helped installed more than 65 small renewable systems at our test sites (Nance Ranch, field tests in Borger, Tulia and Canyon City Well fields, the Wind Test Center, north of the WTAMU campus, and USDA, Bushland, TX) as well as helping industry in California sites near Palm Springs, wind farms here in Texas. He has also assisted with airfoil/blade design for many others.
For more information on Ken, be sure to visit his web site.
Research and Other Activity
Education
- M.S. 1995: WTAMU, Engineering Tech
- B.S. 1980: WTSU, Physics/Computer Science
- Vaughn Nelson and Ken Starcher, Ocean Winds Off Texas Coast
- Report for General Land Office - State of Texas,
- AEI Report 2003-1, August 2003
- Alternative Energy Institute, West Texas A&M University
- V. Nelson, K. Starcher, H. Ito and P. Lockwood, "Extreme Wind Events"
- AWEA Windpower 2003, Austin, Texas
- Vaughn Nelson, Earl Gilmore and Kenneth Starcher
- INTRODUCTION TO WIND ENERGY
- AEI, Report 94-2, September 1994, 39 pgs.
- F.S. Stoddard, V.C. Nelson, B.C. Andrews, and K.L. Starcher
- "Atmospheric Testing of a Special Purpose HAWT Airfoil Family"
- EWEC Conference, Glasgow, Scotland, July 10-13, 1989, p. 70.
- 2000 WTAMU Clarence Thompson Staff Excellence Award
- Board of Directors, American Wind Energy Association (AWEA) 2002-2003
- AWEA Outstanding Contribution Award, 2005
- Texas RenewableEnergy Industry Association, (TREIA)
- Individual Member of the Year, 2005
- The Planetary Society
- The Artemis Foundation
Teaching and Other Service
Ken is currently teaching WTAMU's Wind Energy course with Dr. Vaughn Nelson.
He has traveled to Jamaica, China (5 times), South Africa, Korea, Germany, Brazil (Manaus, Rio de Janeiro, and Sao Paulo), Thailand, Japan (3 times), Costa Rica, Chile and all over Texas and the USA working on wind projects.
He has programmed computers and data loggers, collected and analyze data for long term projects and high speed data for short term tests, produced templates for blade manufacturers to test new thin airfoils, coordinated student/staff schedules, examined modal vibrations of wind turbine blades (learning from Rich Osgood of NREL), collected the first flow visualization images of blades from operating wind turbines (Dr. David Eggleston was the lead there), manufactured VAWT joint fillets (Dr. Woody Stoddard taught us everything) for 34 m vertical axis test bed, and conducted thin airfoil blade tests (with Bruce Andrews).
The people in the parenthesis are the main forces behind each project.