…and here she is, spinning away in the sunshine!
Left is the team who assembled for our wind turbine building workshop.
Over 5 days, Jonathan Schreiber (center) led us through the process of building a Hugh Piggott designed 3F wind turbine.
There was excitement, learning, laughter, work, good food and finally, the satisfaction of seeing the turbine the group had built take to the wind.
The build was really special.
We were not merely assembling a collection of ready made parts – we built the turbine from scratch. This was real hands-on engineering, and incredibly empowering!
Each part was made from basic materials, before being combined to create the working turbine. Planks of wood were sawn, chiseled and planed into turbine blades.
Copper wire and magnets made the stator and magnet rotors. Much careful thought and planning went into each stage to ensure that the component parts were put together correctly.
The stator and magnet rotors were cast in resin, then combined with a van rear-wheel hub to form the generator. The main body of the turbine was welded together from steel pipe and a tail cut from plywood.
On the last day the parts were painted, tested and carefully assembled before being taken out into the field for installation. A large frog hopped onto one of the blades for a quick look before all was ready for lifting up into the wind.
A wealth of information on Hugh Piggott turbines can be found on his website. Jonathan helps people build small wind turbines across Europe and beyond. More information can be found on his website.
More photos and videos of the build can be found on Instagram.
Many thanks to all the people who put time and energy into this project.