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Micro wind turbines for rural homes in Africa
Posted:
Sat Oct 18, 2008 2:08 pmby ketoo
I am part of a group in Mozambique developing very low-power, very cheap vertical axis wind turbines to provide light at night for poor rural homes (92 per cent of homes have no electricity). Some of our work is described in <http://experimentalist.bravehost.com>.
Is anyone else interested in this field?
Keith Warren.
Re: Micro wind turbines for rural homes in Africa
Posted:
Mon Oct 20, 2008 12:18 pmby windgat
Hi Keith. Sounds like a great project, and your web site is interesting. I had trouble trying to read the big PDF unfortunately...
Coincidentally I just got back from AfrikaBurn, where we used a wind turbine to run the lights for a night time puppet show.
Of course feel free to use any designs or info you find on the site, and it would be very interesting to hear of your experience and what works in a rural setting. One of my aims was to create a design that is possible to make and use without high levels of technology infrastructure. I would love to one day be involved in giving courses through Southern Africa to people about how they can use wind to get power.
Re: Micro wind turbines for rural homes in Africa
Posted:
Wed Nov 12, 2008 1:21 pmby Davey
Hi Keith,
Great to see your project online. I live in Inhambane and am looking into the options of wind power for a rural home. The house is situated on the coast and on a hill, so has constant wind. There is no power supply for miles, so it makes sense to try and use the wind and sun energy that we have in abundance.
I would be grateful if you could let me know a bit more about what you think would be suitable. There is no contact details on your website, but it would be good to have a chat. My e-mail address is d_charley@yahoo.com.
Look forward to hearing from you and all the best in your project. I'll be down in maputo hopefully in the next few weeks, so maybe i'll pop over to catembe.
Yours sincerely,
Dave
Re: Micro wind turbines for rural homes in Africa
Posted:
Tue Oct 21, 2014 1:38 pmby syed20
What voltage do you intend to get from the generator? How far apart will the magnets be? You are using very small magnets and very few coil winds, which means you will need to get a high RPM to get a reasonable voltage.Normally that means shorter blades, otherwise the tip speed gets too high. I think you will struggle to get 12V from the configuration you have described. You could combine 2 or even 4 of those magnets together to make a stronger magnet at each position.