Wind turbine building course 24-29 August 2009

Wind turbine building course

Dave took a week's holiday !! to attend a self-build wind turbine course held at Sunseed in Los Molinos, Sorbas.

The course was taught by Aran Eales from V3 and James Curry from Sunseed with 6 eager students. During the course a Hugh Piggot designed 1.8m 24 volt 340 Watt wind turbine was built and installed at Sunseeds solar garden.

The build was split into four main areas with all students involved in all tasks: Ground preparation, The blades, the Electrics and the metal-work.

Ground preparation

The turbine tower is held up by 8 guy ropes attached to 4 ground points, many thanks to Nick who dug out the holes for the dead men in the days prior to the course, and also for filling them back up later in the week

Blades

The blades were hand carved from pine wood in three stages: Front face, back face and final shaping

Electrics - Alternator

The alternator/generator is made up 8 strong static magnets held on a metal plate and encased in resin and 6 electric coils also encased in resin.

Metal Work

The metal work includes the tower and the turbine head, lots of cutting, welding etc

Raising the turbine

The turbine was raised on the Saturday evening, wind-wise it had been a calm day, however a small breeze blew and the blades started spinning nicely.

The rest of Sunseed and some of the neighbours joined the happy crew for a celebration party.

The crew

From left to right: Back: Hertha, Aran, James, Rod, Lauren, Marlene, Nick, Front: Dave.

Water Turbine

Rod had also been playing with a water turbine which had sat around Sunseed for a few years, on Sunday morning whilst most others were in slumber land Rod and Dave completed the test installation. magically a light bulb was lit,

Later the meditation area was lit with three bulbs 60W 40W and a low energy 5W bulb. this is a good example how to use low energy bulbs we had the choice of 1 100W incandescent bulb or a number of low energy bulbs.

Thanks

Thank you all at sunseed for hosting the course, providing food and enthusiasm.