Aachen wind turbine course 2016
In May 2016 I went to Aachen (GER) to build a Piggott wind turbine with a group of students. The Idea of the project was to enhance theoretical university lessons with a real hands-on experience in renewable energy development.
The students call themselves âE3 â Erneuerbare Energien Erfahrenâ and are part of Energybirds e.V. association. Our venue, the StudiWerkstatt was a community-based maker space workshop in a backyard of Aachen city. A nice place to build a turbine, because they got all the tools we needed on site and were really nice and interested in the project too. I arrived in Aachen coming in straight from Scotland where I was working with my friend Hugh Piggott, the creator of the wind turbine design we used. I was instantly flashed by the nice warm spring feeling that was already arriving over Europe. During the course I stayed at âLanger Turmâ, a studentâs home inside an old remaining tower of the city wall – with an amazing view over the whole region!
In the beginning we had a few drawbacks because some wrong materials got delivered. That was nothing to stop us of course, but my time structure for the course week came a bit out of schedule. The 2m turbine is not a very big one in terms of energy production â but it is a nice size of machine to build with a group that has never built anything like this before. We built all parts for the wind turbine ourselves, as in most of my projects. It was the 24v version for use in a battery charging stand alone situation, although It was not clear where it will get installed finally. Personally, I had a good time in Germany with this crew and could learn a lot for courses in the future – as always
Wind turbine construction course
The Aachen Workshop Video