For the Windpower Tanzania project to be a success, there are several requirements that must be met. One of these requirements – finding a reliable Tanzanian partner – seems now to be fulfilled by our collaboration with REDCOT (Renewable Energy Development Company Tanzania). The first prototype of our turbine has already been constructed side by side with them and will be placed in my backyard during the coming week. My backyard? Yes, the first turbine running will be placed in my backyard and I will be doing measurements on its performance. So, you may ask, who is writing this?
My name is Arthur Vos and I am a Master student Applied Physics from Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. I will be performing a 3-month internship at the Windpower Tanzania project. In this time, I will be working at several parts of the project. First of all, by performing measurements and analysis on both the wind speed and the power output of the turbine, I will try to establish the relation between these two variables, yielding a power versus wind speed curve. Given this relation, it will be possible to provide future clients with valuable information on how the turbine will perform at their location of interest.
Also, I will be comparing the power output of the turbines being build and operated in Tanzania to measurements on other Hugh Piggott turbines around the world and to the nominal values as they are stated by the designer of the turbine. We hope this will give us a better insight in the question which steps in the production process are most crucial, which in turn can show us to which parts of the production process we should dedicate most attention in training the local Tanzanian people.