$100 Wind Turbine Brings Light to Villages Without Power
by Lloyd Alter, Toronto on 05. 8.08
Engineers Malcolm Knapp and Heather Fleming of the San Francisco Chapter of Engineers without Borders helped design this $100 wind turbine. ( I also love her "club sandwiches, not seals" T) Wired reports that unlike the large-scale assemblies found in wind farms, the roughly two-foot-wide and three-foot-tall turbine has a vertical axis. McLean said that orientation worked better in the choppy conditions likely to meet the turbine out in the field, where it'll be bolted on to buildings, towers or even trees.
It will be built in Guatemala, designed to be a cheap replacement for the kerosene lamps that are a fire and health risk. Project leader Matt McLean says "We've had to simplify the way we were thinking and get rid of the idea that everything had to be as efficient as possible," such as using teflon plumbing tape. "It's normally used for sealing pipes," said McLean. "But it's a very low cost way of reducing friction." ::Wired via ::Materialicious
I am always dumbfounded at the extreme cost of things like $1,000's for a wind turbine etc this is an awesome new approach.
Where can I get one?!
$20k wind turbines are ridiculous. I could make one from a starter motor and a barrel that would saddle the ridge of my roof for $100.
So this thing is supposed to produce 10~15 watts for $100. That is about twice as expensive as solar per watt, and there is a much greater likelihood of this thing breaking down. If you have a very windy location you might produce power more of the time, and you'll produce it at night when you need it for lighting, but since they're talking about charging a battery with it that's not really an issue.
It seems pretty optimistic to think that this turbine (a savonius rotor design) would even achieve 10~15w. If you consider wind at 10mph, you have 250w/m^2. Guessing from the picture you have about .2m^2 of exposed area, and savonius rotors are about 10~15% efficient, optimistically. That gives us
250*.2*.1= 5w of power.
If you are bolting this thing directly to rooftops or hanging it in trees (!) there will be a lot less power per area available due to turbulence and boundary layer effects.
That said, I am all for reducing indoor air pollution, I just hope that the engineers involved made an informed decision and that they had to rule out solar for some reason they fail to mention.
draw it up! I want one!
That looks like a good start. There are other projects out there at a much more mature state, built by hand and tested in countries around the world.
Take a look at Hugh Piggott's web page at scoraigwind.com for example.
OR visit the Otherpower.com messageboard at fieldlines.com for some real world experience, friendly discussion and help.
This looks like it belongs at a High School science fair compared to the stuff that has been built for YEARS. I'm glad to see people out there trying to make life better for other, less fortunate people, but when they come up with technology that's way behind the "state of the art" homebuilt stuff, I start to question their efforts.
Sorry.
Great idea. Are they going to market these in the US? These seems like a great alternative to gas generators people us to power their campers and RVs.
But is it bird friendly?
@Josh:
I understand the sentement! However, it's important to encourage lots of small, boutique designers to come up with all sorts of different concepts. Otherwise you get stuck with just one concept (like a petroleum-burning engine) for a looooooong time.
So even if this particular contraption doesn't save the world, look at it from the point of view of encouraging the general genius of the community to continue innovating - and with the aim to help others, no less - so that we'll have lots of viable options to suit different conditions in the future.
Hey Folks this is Pete from AIDG.
This is just a post to re-iterate my comments on the original wired article in regards to this project. I would classify the work as being early stage prototype (above high school science fair with the data we'll be collecting, but yes far from being produced). It is not being put into production any time soon, and it has alot more trial work to undergo. The peak power will probably be about 30 or 40 watts. The hundred buck price point is aiming for charge controller, tower, mount, small battery bank.
We've done Other Power style axial flux turbines and to be frank it was too high a price point for individuals in the communities we work with for too little power for the entire community. We work in a region with lots of water as well and for most communities we are focused on hydro installations of under 100KW (yes that is KW not watts).
Import duties on small solar are pretty astounding where we work and the panels can't be locally sourced at the scale we want. We are locally sourcing all the parts for this turbine all the way to the control circuits. This turbine was meant as a small micro-credit financed option for individual families. We're basing the the generator off much of the great work Ed Lenz has done. EWB did a great job in the turbine design in Xela in coming up with some ingenious adaptations to local materials in Xela. But the design has a good ways to go. It is early stage but if things go well in Guatemala we're going to be trying it out in Haiti in areas that truly have no resources.
Here is the EWB team talking about the work
http://www.aidg.org/component/option,com_jd-wp/Itemid,34/p,1048/
In low cost wind we're also doing R&D with humdinger wind energy at the same location:
http://www.aidg.org/component/option,com_jd-wp/Itemid,34/p,789/
http://www.aidg.org/component/option,com_jd-wp/Itemid,34/p,786/
Cheers,
Pete
Hey Folks this is Pete from AIDG.
This is just a post to re-iterate my comments on the original wired article in regards to this project. I would classify the work as being early stage prototype (above high school science fair with the data we'll be collecting, but yes far from being produced). It is not being put into production any time soon, and it has alot more trial work to undergo. The peak power will probably be about 30 or 40 watts. The hundred buck price point is aiming for charge controller, tower, mount, small battery bank.
We've done Other Power style axial flux turbines and to be frank it was too high a price point for individuals in the communities we work with for too little power for the entire community. We work in a region with lots of water as well and for most communities we are focused on hydro installations of under 100KW (yes that is KW not watts).
Import duties on small solar are pretty astounding where we work and the panels can't be locally sourced at the scale we want. We are locally sourcing all the parts for this turbine all the way to the control circuits. This turbine was meant as a small micro-credit financed option for individual families. We're basing the the generator off much of the great work Ed Lenz has done. EWB did a great job in the turbine design in Xela in coming up with some ingenious adaptations to local materials in Xela. But the design has a good ways to go. It is early stage but if things go well in Guatemala we're going to be trying it out in Haiti in areas that truly have no resources.
Here is the EWB team talking about the work
http://www.aidg.org/component/option,com_jd-wp/Itemid,34/p,1048/
In low cost wind we're also doing R&D with humdinger wind energy at the same location:
http://www.aidg.org/component/option,com_jd-wp/Itemid,34/p,789/
http://www.aidg.org/component/option,com_jd-wp/Itemid,34/p,786/
Cheers,
Pete