Well that didn't go well.
I've made another turbine with an aerodynamically better and much! stronger vane design, and today did another Definitely Not Destroying My Father's Back Windscreen speed trial. Thing didn't even make it to the testing road. Twice. First time the bracket holding it to the pole was too small and chewed the wood, so we had to head home and quickly make up a better one, second time the bloody bike axle bent.

It was vibrating and wobbling like crazy, I managed to put two of the vanes on rather unaligned and somehow that made the difference between the previous 80 km/h and everything's fine, and a bent axle at 65.
Bugger.

So I'm going to align and center the vanes like they should be, and add another three more on the bottom of the wheel so that the force is all sideways rather than levering the thing against its contact point.
This was always the plan anyway, I just didn't think it would be necessary for this test.

Tomorrow we're heading into Nelson to, amongst other errands, find a car alternator to be getting actual power of the thing, and an old vacuum cleaner motor to rev up and test the alternator. And a couple more spare bike wheels to mess up.
Also visiting the Nelson Environment Center, where I'm supposed to be giving a construction workshop on all this soon, if I can get the damn thing to work.

Doing stuff is haard.
Can't believe I went through almost two years of this malarky with the solarflower.

Other Tech.

Today I finally started documenting other bits of tech that I've been thinking of and possibly prototyped:
http://www.solarflower.org/?lang=en&content=othertech

I'll be adding to it over the next weeks and months.
The idea is that the project will move to a point where the solarflower is one device of many, and this is the start of the process of getting other things documented, tested, tutorialised, and made generally available and useful.

More accurate wind power average calculations.

Been trying to get this trough to Wolfram Alpha, but their forum doesn't really get used and the FB page, like all pages now, is pretty much set up for ineffectual broadcast only. I'll put it out here to see if any of yall has input.

Basically there's a problem with how most people figure out the viability of home wind power in their area, which is that they'll take the average windspeed (let's say 15 km/h), figure a turbine's power output at that speed, and thereby see how much the turbine will put out per week/month/year.
And if the wind's blowing at a constant 15 km/h then that will be accurate. Let's say about 12 watts for a typical meter diameter turbine.
But, if the wind's actually not blowing at all half the time (0 watts), and at 30 km/h the other half (98 watts) then the actual average power output is gong to be 49 w, not 12. If it's 60 km/h a quarter the time it'd be 195 w.
It's because wind power goes up by the cube function of its speed. A little more wind makes a lot more power, and just taking the average (mean) speed doesn't at all accommodate this, so people are making the decision on whether to invest in a turbine based on erroneous information.

So what I'd like to see is a calculation in Wolfram whereby the windspeed data for an area is graphed for a given period, the area under the graph, ie the total wind power, is calculated, and a windspeed average given such that that's how fast the wind would have to be constantly blowing to give you that much power.
People can then multiply that by the output of their turbine and see if it's going to be a viable investment for them.

First destruction test of the vertical axis wind turbine.
This was mainly to see what kind of winds it would take unloaded, and where would need strengthening. I also measured revs and tip speed ratio.
Overall it held together very well, mounted on the back of the car (slightly insane, but effective) at up to 80 km/h, the only point that seems to have failed is the area where the flat of the vane meets the curve, as shown at the end of the video. This is due to the flat flapping and flexing, which is what I'll now fix with the next build.
I'll be getting more plates this week, rebuild with an improved design, and retest (hopefully over 100 km/h).

$10 wind turbine prototype

The SolarFlower has pretty much been the flagship bit of tech for what is becoming a larger project.
So far I've documented the non electrical temperature regulation system and the mesh reflector dish, and in the next couple months I'll hopefully be adding an air coolant fridge/freezer, lattice polytunnel, loudspeaker linear alternator, and some kind of way of generating electricity from heat (probably along the lines of a thermoacoustic alternator, or liquid piston steam engine.) All will of course follow the angle of being open source, scrap makeable with basic tools, and be documented and posted to the Solarflower website.

But what I'm working on now is a vertical axis wind turbine.

 Providing the thing doesn't destroy itself in actual wind, this is so far a very cheap, easy, quick, and structurally sound way to make this turbine design. I'm using Ed Lenz's Lenz2 design, which has been tested at about 40% mechanical efficiency.

Materials used:
5 74 x 60 cm aluminium printing plates (£1 each = £5)
~100 pop rivets (~£5)
Bike wheel (free)
6 M3 nuts and bolts (negligible)

Tools used:
Drill
Rivet gun
Craft knife
Straight edge
Printer

Time taken was 2-3 days on my own, but that's prototyping which takes vastly longer than making something known. I'd expect it to come down to easily a day for one person at pottering around speed.

Power output (mechanical):
Still have to see if the thing survives, but according to the calculator for this design:

20 km/h wind = 28 watts
30 = 90 w
40 = 220 w
50 = 420 w
60 = 730 w
70 = 1,155 w

It's now set up at a mate's place out of town and we're waiting for some serious wind to come through to see if any structural improvements are needed. When I'm comfortable in signing off on the design I will tutorialise and post it to the website, and maybe look at doing some workshops on it here.

More updates to come.

Quick teaser for upcoming big news for the project:



View The SolarFlower Trip 2013 in a larger map

The main site ( http://solarflower.org ) is now up and operational, and all the tutorials are in place.
After three years work, this project has now officially launched.

I'm a bad blogger. Six months and no updates...
The blog is, however, the only part of the project I've been seriously neglecting. In fact there's so many developments to report I'm going to have to do it via bullet list:

• Spent a month in Spain with another guy from Open Source Ecology Europe, Chris, on the property in Extremadura setting the place up as a free project and permaculture space. Posted details and updates here: openeland.org
• There you can also find details of our first free skillshare summer camp, starting August 4th.
• Returned to Edinburgh in March to chill out a bit, see the people I love, and recharge after two years solid work on this thing.
• Started conceptualising a handful new bits of tech, including a non-electrical refrigerator/freezer/water generator/dehumidifier, an ultra simple steam engine for electrical production from any heat source (including solar), a magnetohydrodynamic generator, liquid lens, lattice polytunnel, improvements to the temperature regulation system, and if there was more I probably should've written them down.
  Details somewhere, eventually.
• Am heading to Switzerland Tuesday to help out on a 30 square meter open source solar concentrator; the Solarfire.
• Continuing to liaise with the Finnish open source resource management and search engine; Caloom.com.
• And most importantly: started in on finishing the SolarFlower tutorials and website.

The website is now up and reasonably functional: solarflower.org
And the first tutorial, the Box Collector, is finished (!), with the other five pretty close.

All this is still in beta, so if you feel like being handy, have a look and tell all the basic factual and grammatical errors I've made.

Stay tuned.

Daniel.

It occurs to me that I never actually posted here what's going on.

There's this group, called Open Source Ecology Europe, wanting to build various kinds of free technologies in the vein of energy, food, structures, whatnot.

http://oseeurope.org
http://oseeurope.org/forum
https://www.facebook.com/OpenSourceEcologyEurope

And so on.
I've been working with them on a couple of things, looking at setting up an online open source resource management engine, developing some tech, checking some locations, building a bit of infrastructure.
Right now I've got about a three week window free, so I've come back to Spain to do some work setting up the first on the ground project space, in Extremadura.
Basically by the time I leave here I want to leave a six meter geodesic dome, a greenhouse and at least one hexayurt. Also possible a solar oven, composting toilet and some kind of potable water source.
Coz, you know, three weeks is like forever.

And you're more than welcome to come join in.

Blog and general info: http://openeland.org
Facebook event: https://www.facebook.com/events/334671186553928/

3D maps of the Open Source Ecology Europe Extremadura location. At some point I'll be doing overlays for these, such as slope angle, insolation, etc.

If you're having problems with the Quicktime VRs below, here's the non fancy versions (click for larger):

 Back in Madrid now after checking out the first potential Open Source Ecology Europe living and project space in Extremadura. Got a bit of data and information about the place which I'll be posting over the next couple of days. Here's the first of it: (These aren't the best quality, but you'll get the idea.)


On the flat area in the bend of the creek. With good soil and access to water, likely the best place to start farming. (You'll need Quicktime, available here: http://www.apple.com/quicktime/)
http://www.solarflower.org/stuff/extr_flat_pano1.mov

On the top of the rise. Flat ground, good drainage, good place to build structures. Nice tree. http://www.solarflower.org/stuff/extr_hilltop_pano1.mov

Access road front gate. http://www.solarflower.org/stuff/extr_road_pano1.mov