Usual place is under my bed
Beautiful but really strange…
Ready to fight !
Does anyone can tell me what is that thing ?
Scorpion… in toilet !
Magnificient dragonfly
Huum… Miam !
Frog that does not look very friendly
OriginsThe idea of a locally built small wind turbine came from Hugh Piggott when he decided to build his own wind turbine on the Scoraig island in Scotland, a very windy region, in the 1980’s. After different projects for his neighbors, he defined the design for producing small wind turbines at low costs without any complex tools and making them suitable to be built with different local materials.
Nowadays, a lot of engineers from many different countries have adapted Piggott’s models by making the turbines well fitted for their respective rural areas and creating their own organisation. In November 2014, the 2nd Wind Empowerment Global Conference will gather all these different organisations, providing an opportunity to diffuse and share the global knowledge about small wind turbines and facilitate the electrification of poor rural areas in the world.
Hugh Piggott
“Saving by learning and learning by doing.” could represent the locally built wind turbine philosophy. Transfer the technology through different training workshops to farmers, villagers, etc., allows the organisation to delegate the operation and maintenance of the turbine and, by the way, reduce their costs. If you can teach some people living in the village the basics of the technology and the safety rules, you would not be obliged to hire a technician in case of problems which would imply added transportation costs and wages. Furthermore, the workshop is productive as the entire turbine is built and installed when people are learning the building process. Finally, each organisation can use workshops as a way of doing research, testing others systems in order to improve the entire technology.
Basically, a wind turbine is converting kinetic energy from the wind into electrical energy, which could be used for battery charging, water pumping, etc.. The blades of the turbine receive a part of the wind airflow and move magnet rotors, which convert the kinetic energy into a rotating magnetic field around another part called the stator transforming the magnetic energy into electricity. The small wind turbines power capacity starts from less than 1 kWh to more than 10 kWh, generally varying with the stator’s diameter and blades’ size.
The small wind turbine technology – From Jon Leary’s thesis – Adapted from Roland Beile / Tripalium
This initial technology is not only open source, it allows a flexibility for the local manufacturers to adapt the turbine’s design to the local constraints. In this sense, there are many possibilities according to the environment resources (wind speed, humidity, mountains or plains, availability of skills, electricity demand, etc.) to create the custom-fitted small wind turbine and improve its technical efficiency.
Global wind resources
According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), approximately 1.2 billion people still have no access to electricity including 300 millions people in India. Most of whom are living in very poor rural areas, often very isolated and out of the grid.
People without electricity access
If we consider the following graphic, the concave trend shows that the first kWh available has an important impact on the Human Development Index (HDI), which means that the electrification stage plays an important role in the development. By the way, small wind turbines as well as solar panels have to seize this important demand in order to improve local living conditions providing green electricity.
HDI function of the annual electricity consumption (Source: UNDP 2006)
However, it is important to consider the embodied energy, also called grey energy that represents the sum of all the energy used during the lifecycle (production, extraction, processing, manufacturing, transportation, implementation, use, maintenance and recycling) of a product. In this regard, small wind turbines should be far more competitive compared to solar panels as many pieces are built on the site with local materials mainly using human energy. One of the research axes in the future could be to find a way for easily determining the embodied energy in small wind turbines.
In the south of Tamil Nadu (Kanyakumari areas), the places are very windy according to multiple data sources (i.e. 3TIER previous wind map) and appear to be very suitable for developing and testing new generation wind water pumping technology. Moreover, there is more than 26 millions diesel water pumps in India which should be replaced using solar or wind energy. The Indian government has recently planed to invest 1.6 billions dollars (100 billions Indian rupees) in the next 5 years in order to replace 200,000 diesel water pumps (less than 1% of the market). In exchange, farmers would have to use drip irrigation system in order to save water resources. This investment of 1.6 billions dollars shows how important is the market to replace 3hp and 5hp diesel water pumps.
Indian Government in New Delhi
Following this objective, MinVayu is working on developing new technologies for more efficient wind turbines, especially to make the wind turbine systems lighter, easier to transport, install and maintain by testing some materials like bamboo. In cooperation with ORSED, their objective is to replace thousands of old diesel water pumps in the next years. By replacing this old system, this project would have a positive impact on the environment as well as on the trades balances and government budget of India, which is importing petrol and giving subsidies to sustain farmers’ diesel demand for water pumping.
Bamboo center for testing (Auroville)
To conclude, hundreds of small wind turbine installations would allow to create an important network reducing the maintenance costs and the non-repayment risk, especially if we are able to create a system with different incentives like battery charging in home and internet connection. The development of a such system would be the key to obtain fundings for developing a sustainable rural electrification as well as installing smart irrigation system and providing an access to the global network.
New article in preparation about the project. The workshop in Bangalore was cancelled because there was not enough participants to cover the costs. At the moment, we are working on the prototype of wind turbine for 3hp water pump, making different tests in order to have an estimation of the potential extracted water volume. The weather’s conditions are not really good, which is making working conditions very difficult and slowing…
Eduardo working on the earth connector (under the rain…)
Furthermore, I have decided to live in Auroville, which is an international community with multiples research fields and different cultural activities, where MinVayu is implanted. The place is very nice and peaceful, suitable for meditation.
Finally, with my new friend Eduardo, the best Venezuelan mechanical engineer as well as my spanish teacher, we have visited Pondicherry, been shopping, enjoyed nice food, etc. This week, I will publish both an article on the project and another one on Pondicherry. Stay tuned !
Pondicherry sea’s bay
I am arrived safely and having a good evening in Pondicherry. The trip was really nice, particularly the taxi. Each driver in India is always pressing the horn like a quiet complex code to advertise that he’s here, where he would like to go, etc.. There are many things to say about my first moments in India, it’s amazingly exotic and stimulates my desire to discover more landscapes. Tomorrow morning, I will visit Auroville, especially the MinVayu workshop, and on Wednesday I should go in Bangalore.
Now, it’s 1:45am in India, some dogs are barking in the street that I need to cross to go in my room, I will need to do it quickly !
Je suis bien arrivé en Inde et j’ai passé une bonne soirée à Pondicherry. Le voyage était vraiment agréable, particulièrement le trajet en taxi. Chaque conducteur en Inde est tout le temps en train d’actionner son klaxon comme un code assez complexe pour avertir qu’il est là, où il veut aller, etc. (Je ne vais pas louer de scooter avant de bien comprendre tout ça…). Il y a vraiment beaucoup de choses à dire à propos de mes premiers moments en Inde, c’est vraiment très exotique et cela stimule mon désir de découvrir encore plus de paysages. Demain matin, je vais visiter Auroville, notamment l’atelier de MinVayu, et mercredi je devrais partir vers Bangalore.
Maintenant, c’est 1h45 en Inde, quelques chiens aboient dans la rue que je dois traverser pour rejoindre ma chambre, je vais devoir faire ça rapidement !
Voilà, il est un peu plus de 1h lorsque j’écris cet article. Nous sommes dimanche, mon sac et ma valise sont prêts, à quelques heures seulement du grand départ. Je quitterai la France à 15h00 depuis l’aéroport Charles de Gaulle pour atterrir à Colombo au Sri Lanka 10 heures plus tard, il sera 4h45 heure locale. Je reprendrai ensuite un vol à 7h00 direction Chennai où un taxi m’attendra à 9h pour m’emmener à Pondicherry, la première escale de mon séjour.
Je décide de faire ce petit article en français pour vous expliquer quelles sont les quelques étapes indispensables lors de la préparation d’un séjour en Inde lorsque l’on réside en France et également vous donner quelques astuces et bons conseils.
Premièrement si vous avez décidé de partir en Inde, et j’insiste sur le caractère premier, il faut faire deux choses importantes:
Ensuite, il sera important de vous assurer que vous êtes couvert en cas de pépin. Sachez que la sécurité sociale rembourse les frais de santé sur la base du prix des soins et des médicaments en France. Pour un pays comme l’Inde, je pense que c’est suffisant mais un petit détour chez votre mutuel ou votre banque (elle propose sans doute aussi des assurances compétitives) est conseillé. Un petit passage chez votre médecin traitant pour constituer une pharmacie de voyage me parait également une bonne idée. Vous serez content de l’avoir si vous tombez malade et même si rien ne vous arrive, vous pourrez donner les médicaments sur place avant votre retour… dans tous les cas ils seront utiles !
Voilà en résumé les démarches qui me paraissent indispensables avant un séjour en Inde.
Lorsque viendra le moment de commencer à préparer vos affaires, voici une petite liste d’objets pratiques que j’ai choisi d’emmener et que je vous conseille:
Si vous avez encore de la place, vous pouvez également faire plaisir en apportant:
De plus, en faisant cela vous êtes sûr d’avoir de la place dans votre valise pour ramener des souvenirs !
Bien sûr, il faudra également veiller à prendre:
Pensez également à vérifier les règles de votre compagnie aérienne concernant les bagages (poids limite autorisé, etc.) et à prendre un petit sac congélateur avec fermeture zip pour y mettre vos produits liquides qui doivent être inférieurs à 100ml (s’il y en a dans votre bagage à main), sinon mettez les dans votre bagage en soute !
Voilà, je pense avoir fait le tour… Il est temps pour moi d’aller me coucher car la journée de demain sera longue.
à bientôt !
MC.
Valise prête / Suitcase ready
Today at 3:00pm, I would be in direction of India !
I’ve finally got my Visa last tuesday. All the procedure for the Visa exhausted me during these previous weeks, the embassy firstly refused my visa request, asked me a lot of documents, I was obliged to do costly lightning trips between Nancy (my hometown) and Paris, etc. but i’ve got it !
I’ll arrive in Pondicherry on Monday and I’ll stay few days before going in Bangalore for handmade small wind turbines workshop. Stay tuned !
Info: The next article will be in french as its purpose is to advice how a french should prepare his trip in India, supposing that processes are different in others countries.
WindExperience 