This week our Malian team completed the production of a pedagogic electronic board. It is the first complete malian assembled wind turbine control system!
This major achievement comes as part of the base skills acquisition program that took place lately! The control system consists of a three phase rectifier, a diversion load controller, a battery bank and a dump load, and its production was a great opportunity to teach base electricity knowledge to the group: AC versus DC, parallel and series connection, voltage, current and resistance are now clear concepts to our group.
Yet, this is only the beginning: off-the-shelf diversion load controllers represent a large share in the costs of a wind turbine installation. As such, to prepare massive dissemination of the technology, we are now working on a locally produced diversion load controller and overspeed protection system, counting on the competence and creativity of several volunteers.
We plan to address this challenge in two phases: a first phase will consist in the implementation of a simple analog load diversion system and protection circuit, and the second, long term phase will focus on programmable switched mode power controllers which should open perspectives for direct tie of wind turbines to electric appliances.
This is all part of a larger RaD effort taking place at the moment: we are convinced that massive dissemination of the Hugh Piggott wind turbine will benefit greatly from a more rational design and the development of a complete “open-source” hardware renewable energy. This effort includes full scale wind tunnel testing for experimental characterisation of the turbine’s aerodynamic properties, and will help characterise the design and assess the feasibility of lower cost environmentally friendly blades.