Design that Matters Field Journal

Adaptive Wind Turbines

During our meetings with Ibrahim Togola and Tom Burrel at the Mali Folkecenter, we discussed the idea of an adaptive, small-scale (order 1-100 kW) wind turbine and generator set. Over the last year, Design that Matters has been conducting research into the feasability of designing a small wind turbine that is robust and protects itself from damage in high winds. Large-scale turbines can rotate the turbine blades so as to shed the load in high winds. With small turbines, the blades just tend to snap off or the generator gets wrecked from spinning too fast.

Here is a simple turbine design, from a water pump in Segou.

Ibrahim and Tom agree that a low-cost adaptive turbine would be useful--it remains to be seen whether it's feasible. The adaptive component for small turbines could be as simple as flexible vanes, or vanes that can rotate in their sockets, up to something with motorized turbine blade sockets and a control system.