Just got back from a trip to Holmes Co. Ohio (Amish), anyway they have a little oil beneath them and there are numerous small grass hoppers (coloquial term for an oil well and rocking headgear) about. The cottage were we stayed was on a farm and one well head was in a pasture a few hundred yards from the cottage. I walked up to it to take a closer look. The electrical metering caught my eye. It looked like a standard "glass bowl" encased meter. As the rocker entered the upstroke (pulling oil up and out of the ground) the meter spun as usual - forward, however as it entered the downstroke (pump gear returning down into the shaft) the meter stopped spinning and started spinning the other way (in reverse), at the end of the down stroke the meter wheel stopped and again went forward. The reverse spin time/distance was not as much as the forward so there was always a net forward spin for each complete stroke (kind of like two steps forward and one step back etc). Anyway I was amazed to see this, they had harnessed the falling weight of the pump gear to generate electricity on the down stroke and was selling it back to the grid - all this in a little rural oil well that stood on a 8' by 8' pad. It flies in the face of discussions we have had here regarding the inability of getting meters to turn in the reverse direction. Anyone else seen this type of setup or wish to comment - I was impressed.
Edited for typo's
[This message has been edited by Ann Brush (edited 11-19-2006).]
