אוג' 30 2008
Notes from the wind turbine building course in Sachnin last week
A good experience for a change! I haven't had positive ones with most of my wind turbine building courses. It's not that we finished a fully working wind turbine in this course – no, the usuall constraints of time that were imposed did not allow for that. But i have a feeling that this time – the two turbine who were bought as kits in various stages of completence, will be erected. Simply because – these guys really need the electricity! from the 9 palestinians taking the course, there are guys living in the most remote off grid locations in palestine. Finishing and installing these wind turbines is simply a hugh increase in quality of life, one that i hope they won't skip on.
What we did in the course is build one generator from scratch (Noam and Elad instructed that part), build one almost finished blade from scratch (me) and see how to assemble and a glimpse of how to balance finished blades (me again. blades and kit from otherpower.com)
Alla allready published pictures in a local arabic online newspaper, first time i had to translate from arabic to english – apperantly there isn't a possibility for that in yahoo's altavista, so i moved to google for translation – very nice tool i may add – so here are some pictures from that site. The translation (use this link) of the complete article refers to the turbine as a fan… I'm very upset by that no need adding, i just wonder if it's google's translation fault or the articles writer?
Other then that, there are a few NGO's leading the camp with small wind turbine in developing countries, one of them is BlueEnergy, which her co founder Mathias Craig was recently recognized as a Hero for the environment by CNN, and are doing a beautiful and inspiring job in south America with exactly the same kind of wind turbine technology.
Location of the course – sachnin's local "Towns association for environmental quality agan beit netofa"
Assembling the generator – Elad in the center second from left
Assembling the bought blades , the full bought kit in front
Hamdan machingng the second blade we never finished – wood splinters everywhere
Drawing the locations of the wood studs connecting the 3 blades together. Ahmed from east Jerusalem on my right, the guy on my left ,who's name i can't remember, is from the "Towns association for environmental quality agan beit netofa" and he took quite a hands on approach in the course, helping to build the turbine occasionally, I think he really enjoyed it! it's definatly a change from dealing with hazardous materials and waste water and such…
