Wind Energy

Having decided to fully explore the renewable energy sources for the farm, one of the proposals at the back of the mind was the Wind Energy.  I have seen many wind mills all over the place. Thirumala Hills have plenty of them. South of my native place, the entire villages around Aralvaimozhi is filled with wind mills generating commercial electricity.  The wind blows through a gap in western ghats from Kerala in those places.

Bu they are very giant size wind Mills. I believe each of them costs around Rs. 1 crore or more.  Not affordable.  I need a tiny and efficient one.  Searching the internet, one will find very few of them. The practical experience of purchasing and installation wind pumps of reasonable size are mentioned in few blogs like Point Return. 

Recently I chanced upon a manufacturer TinytechIndia in http://www.tinytechindia.com  located at Rajkot, Gujarat.  I am attracted by the simple and bold philosophy of its owner Shri Mr. V K Desai - For Renewable & Solar Energy.  He is marvellous.

This is TinyTechIndia Wind Pump

Has invited me to visit his plant and I am scheduled to travel next week to get a first hand experience of watching few things. a) Steam Engine b) Wind Pump  and c) Solar Concentrators.  All these are time tested, vintage technologies that will never fail. I am going to try atleast two of them.

Presently it is important to measure the wind speed at the farm. For this one needs an instrument called Anemometer. After doing some study and enquiries, I found a cheap and best anemometer in the market manufactured at Nashik. I have enquired for a "Cup Counter Anemometer".  This instrument will be tied to a pole and eracted in the farm. There will be a physical counter which will advance as the spindle rotates due to wind. Once a week we need to take the readings from this counter and estimate the wind speed or volume for the given time.

I just donot want to take a chance and want to be sure that there is some wind movement at any time of the day.

Anemometer : Courtesy Internet

The preference of wind over solar is that the wind is available day and night.  I just need some wind everyday to pump water from a depth of 40 feet.  My idea is that if giant size wind turbines weighing several tonnes can be rotated by wind, why can't a simple sail based fan run properly. Specifications say that we just need 10feet/sec wind speed. I want to measure this.  I hope to do this from next week, once the instrument reaches the site.