Blog is moving to scoraigwind.co.uk

Jimmy at Eirbyte is hosting my blog now.

The new blog URL is http://scoraigwind.co.uk/

see you there....

Wind Turbine Course at Abergeldie 24th to 26th September 2010.

A wind turbine course, run by Bruce from Talamh Housing Cooperative and hosted by the Abergeldie Community Organisation, will be run on a learn by doing basis - equiping participants with the hands on skills and knowledge to build their own wind turbines.

The completed turbine, built during the course, will be donated to a local organic vege farm which plays an active role in the local community.

Course fees will be £80 / person. For people on benefits / low incomes there is a suggested donation of £20. Catering is included in the course fee.

Camping space is available and a shared yurt space will also be available (16ft) for sleeping between six and eight people sharing (first come basis).

If you wish to take part in the course please contact Bill Boggia email bill_boggia@yahoo.com, Tel: 013397 42467, Mob: 0771 969 0480 to book your place and advise of any special dietry requirements.

Map of the location:

Nova Scotia weekend installation workshop

Learn how to install a wind energy system - October 1-3rd - Windhorse farm, Nova Scotia

To reserve a place and to find out more, go to
http://silverfootwind.com/workshop2010_install.html

Another absurd example of urban wind ignorance

I came across this article today:

With one turbine up, others may follow

There is a lot of comment and discussion underneath the article. What I find striking and alarming is that nobody seems to notice that the tower is so short that the wind turbine is not being exposed to any wind. It makes me angry and sad to see small wind turbines of this sort, sited in this way, being held up as examples of the way forward. Anyone with any real knowledge and experience of small wind turbines knows that they need to be on tall towers above surrounding obstacles to work properly. This site is like putting a solar panel in the cellar. Also the turbine type is a VAWT which has huge problems but we can put that to one side since it is never going to produce any useful energy placed like that in any case.

grrrr.

Cutting out magnet rotor disks - Chris Olsen's method

Pictures of the setup here.

Leeds Metropolitan University Volunteering in the Gambia

Constructing a wind turbine to charge batteries in Kartong village, The Gambia March/April 2010

Thanks Anne Schiffer

Some nice educational ideas:
some scary moments

Electronic edition of Wind turbine plans

My Wind Turbine Recipe Book is now available in electronic form on Amazon Kindle. As yet, this is only the metric edition but if the project is successful I will also adapt the 'English units' (inches) edition for Kindle too.

Meantime if you want hard copy then you can still get it in either metric or inches units from me by post using Paypal. Orders are dealt with immediately and should reach you anywhere in the world in under a week (often less, but we cannot guarantee any timing).

The Amazon Kindle price is dramatically cheap at least to begin with, because I want to make this available to as many people as possible. I am hoping for a lot of sales but if these do not materialise then I will probably increase the price later, to try to make my efforts more worthwhile.