Fiber Glass Turbine Blade
Project Snapshot:
Category:Energy
Sub Category:Production
Location:N/A
Latitude: N/A
Longitude: N/A
Members Involved:Practical Action (formerly Intermediate Technology Development Group or ITDG); Engineers Without Borders – United Kingdom (EWB-UK); Sibol ng Agnam at Teknologiya (SIBAT-Philippines)
Time Period: Manual Published May 2008
Capital Costs:225 US dollars for materials
Websites:
Website for wind turbine designed by Hugh Piggott:
Practical Action – Practical Answers website page for the turbine’s electric generator:
Practical Action – Practical Answers website page for the turbine blade:
Summary:
In remote communities throughout the world, one of the largest barriers to development is access to electricity. The cost of building power lines across rugged terrain or to communities in sparsely populated areas can be too expensive to be practical. In these cases a low cost alternative to harness energy on site is needed. A wind or water turbine can be a great way to harness natural forces to generate electricity. Pracitcal Action provides this guide to building fiberglass blades for a wind turbine.
This solution is a companion to another Practical Action solution called The Permanent Magnet Generator. The generator, or PMG, is the electricity producing part of a wind turbine. In addition to the blades and PMG, a functional wind turbine also requires a tower to on which to mount it and a tail to keep it turned in the direction of the wind.
Originally Hugh Piggott’s design for a wind turbine called for wooden blades. However, a team from Engineers Without Borders - United Kingdom (EWB-UK) and Sibol ng Agham at Teknolohiya (SIBAT-Philippines) devised a method to create fiberglass blades. Fiberglass has many benefits over wood including: a shorter manufacturing time, reduced cost, and the ability to make blades that are always the same.
The advantages of fiberglass come from the manufacturing process. While wooden blades must be hand crafted one at a time, a single mold can be built for the fiberglass material and used over and over again to produce many blades relatively quickly. Since the blades all come from the same mold, they will be exactly the same. If the blades are slightly different it can lead to balance problems in a turbine. These problems can reduce the life of the turbine and if the balance discrepancies are severe it can permanently damage the PMG.
The Blade Manufacture Guide walks through the manufacturing process of fiberglass blades. It includes a list of materials, photos, and step-by-step instructions for producing the blades for a 1KW turbine. The cost for a set of 3 blades in the Philippines in 2008 was about 225 US dollars, but this should only be taken as a rough price estimate. It takes 2 people about 5 days to produce a set of blades.
The Blades Manual is another resource for turbine blades. It gives several designs and construction methods that can be used to produce blades for smaller turbines.
Documents:
Complete guide to fiberglass turbine blades for a 1KW turbine - blade_manufacture_guide.pdf
Additional turbine blade guide for a 500W turbine - blades_manual.pdf