Poland wind turbine project 2016

Lukasz from Poland asked me if I would come around and help him build a wind turbine for his Bachelor’s thesis. Of course, I accepted the invitation and we built a 2F Piggott turbine together. I even had time to visit the city of Wroclaw.

The project took place in the southwest of Poland. It was June and therefore quite hot when I arrived after a long ride from Austria.

Coil winding session. On my birthday by the way, what a lovely present to spend my time creating nice stuff!

When we first sat down in some restaurant to discuss how we are going to work, it quickly turned out that Lukasz was super motivated to use every single hour to push his wind turbine Bachelor thesis forward. We had scheduled 10 days of work to build the 2F machine and discuss some off-grid system architecture.

Lukasz was very keen on running the thing professionally. The next day, we got down to business. We worked in a tiny workshop in a company building of Lukasz’ uncle. He owns a building material supply company and kindly offered us to use his tools and facility.

Lukasz @ blade carving

We started off by carving the three rotor blades from wood, that took us around two days. Then we got hands on the generator by making casting moulds for the epoxy resin parts (magnet rotors and stator). Since we were only two people working on this, we decided to split up tasks but I always made sure Lukasz could learn all the things he was interested in.

We were facing some problems with the car wheel hub which is used as the turbine’s main bearing. The shaft was slightly bent, so we had to find another hub. That was harder than I thought, but after running around Wroclaw city between several hardware shops and scrap yards we found the one hub that fits perfectly.

The turbine hub

While some resin cast parts were setting, we welded the steel frame. Welding was pretty new to Lukasz but no problem after a few practice runs. We did teamwork, one welding, the other one cutting and preparing parts for welding. After two days, the turbine’s steelwork was done. We could assemble all the parts and finish the project right on time by testing the alternator and take some pictures of our work.

Getting steel work done on the tail

For me as a course teacher, it was a new experience to supervise a single person in a workshop situation. I could not just delegate jobs to a large group of students, this time, a different time management was needed. I did a lot of work during the week myself. I enjoyed this project and the vibe of the city which is crowded by students in the hot summer time. In the evening I did some walks to explore the place, took some pictures and got work done the river banks – Perfect work/life balance!

Wroclaw has a lot of water canals