Alternative Energy in Spain

While traveling in Spain for six weeks to study alternative energy and green technologies, I have observed some interesting trends.


I have been staying in a small pueblo named Casas de Benitez. Casas de Benitez has a population of slightly more than 1,000 people, and is flanked with wind generators (called molinetas by the locals) and solar cell farms. Everywhere I have gone in Spain over the past month (mostly in the Castilla-La Mancha region) has been dotted with wind turbines and solar cell farms. I recently drove from Casas de Benitez to Alicante for some sailing, and constantly passed wind farms.

We also passed a wide load on the highway which turned out to be a huge semi hauling three 100 meter blades for a new turbine installation.


This is the area of Spain where Cervantes wrote Don Quixote, and Molinos were used to grind wheat into flower for centuries. As I walked through the narrow streets of Casas de Benitez, vacant lots were covered which grains of wheat drying in the hot summer sun and in preparation for grinding by molinas (not wind powered in this case).



Spain's wind output has doubled over the last three years and will double again before 2010. While we are seeing wind power growth in the US, it is not as dramatic as in Spain. Helping things more, Spain's wind turbines, for the most part large HAWTs (horizontal axis wind turbines), are much lighter than most due to new technology developed in Spain.I hope that wind power in the US will now grow at faster rates. Certainly the gasoline price increases and resultant economic effects will help make the country take a long term look at alternative energy. Hopefully we won't repeat the shortsighted mistakes that were made in the 1970's after the first gas crisis abated and prices dropped.

More information on Spain's wind power growth can be read in this interesting article from MITs Technology Review. I found it very interesting the all wind farms in Spain are linked together and controlled by a central computing facility. Take time to play the interview video (available in several languages) at the MIT website because it is extremely interesting.

VAWT Video Part 2 - Power Generation.

VAWT Part 2 -- Gears and Generator


Please check out the following link to a YouTube Video of part two of our wind turbine build. Video - Part 2 This shows our geared generator design and a desktop CNC machine cutting gears.

Two other designs are being worked on for future:

1. Geared design shown in this video.

2. A version with a built in rotating cylinder of permanent magnets exciting a stationary coil (permanent magnet alternator) with no mechanical gearing and hence no mechanical loss as is inherent with gears.

3. Another type with a geared automotive generator (no magnets at all) whose mechanical resistance is controlled with PWM(Pulse Width Modulation) by a microcontroller controlling power into the rotating coil. With no power, the coil should free-wheel with minimal resistance. In strong winds, we could "make hay while the sun shines" by putting a lot of juice into the coil. In light winds, the power in the coils is reduced to an amount which still will at least hopefully trickle charge the battery. A small permanent magnet motor-generator would be used to jump start the process and handle the case of a totally dead battery, and could "trickle charge" a dead battery. This design is very interesting from a software point of view, but has the highest amount of technical risk.

The wind speed, RPM, and outputs will be monitored, and more importantly compared, with a flexible sensing and visual programming environment called NeatTools, which will be discussed and "filmed" in future posts. We will also be using a TNG-3B from http://www.sensyr.com in conjunction with NeatTools to simultaneously monitor multiple inputs from hall effect sensors (from a small magnet on each turbine axle), voltage sensors, and a wind speed sensor.

CNC part 1-Unboxing and Connecting

I received a CNC machine last month and opened it up. Here is video of the initial checkout of the machine.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duunwn_yfW8

Since this was posted I have used the machine for many other projects including making gears for my wind turbine and machining plastic front panels for local companies.


I did a lot of research before buying this machine from IMService ( http://www.imsrv.com/ ) and I think I made a good decision as it is making us more productive. The owner of the company, Fred Smith, provides excellent support. Here is a link to the actual 12 x 24 inch machine I bought:

http://www.cadcamcadcam.com/index.asp?PageAction=VIEWPROD&ProdID=208


Soon I am going to try to make printed circuits on the machine using special micro end mills.

Here is the YouTube Video of the unboxing: YouTube Video

Ship in Santo Domingo Harbor, Dominican Republic

I saw this ship docked in the harbor at Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic in February 2008. I used my new Kodak Z812IS camera with built in panoramic stitching to take this shot. Well the shot was way too large to display on the internet, so I used a free tool from the clever Brits at Clevr.com for displaying panoramic photos on websites after first downsizing the number of pixels in the image. The final product is a flash object which can be embedded in any web page or blog. Let me know what you think.

Dominican Republic

Just returned from the Dominican Republic. We stayed in Santo Domingo for about a week and had a great time. We stayed with a relative who is working on the new subway project and got to see the country in a non-tourist fashion. I will post a movie shortly on some of our DR experiences.

I looked for wind turbines when I was there but found none. A pilot project was abandoned, purportedly due to "lack of wind". The wind was blowing 10-20 knots north of Santo Domingo most of the time I was there so I want to go back to the DR with some VAWTS and see if they are viable.

VAWT video

Here is a video demonstration of our sub-$100 VAWT.





If you want to make one yourself, here is an instructional video (about 8 minutes long).




Here is a video of it running in some gusty winds.

Wind Power, CNC, and More

Welcome to my blog. Here I will keep you abreast of new developments at the Berezin house. Currently, we are developing an inexpensive "build it yourself" VAWT (vertical axis wind turbine). After checking locally for a wind turbine and finding entry level prices in the $3,000 to $5,000 range, I decided to build a plastic barrel VAWT. Last week we bought a CNC machine to fabricate parts for our VAWT. I will be publishing videos of our progress on these projects.