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A team of students from the University of Wisconsin at Madison used additive technology to make blades for a wind turbine. In the future, such turbines could be installed on cell towers in rural India. The team developed their project through a national competition run by the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA).
How to provide electricity to remote areas? The answer is simple: use the power of the wind. At least so is the opinion of the American Wind Energy Association, which invited students from 12 American educational institutions to find new ways to meet the demand for electricity. Students who took part in the competition "Extraction of energy from wind" offered their vision of the problem, which may well find application in rural areas or areas cut off from the outside world.
One of the student teams, WiscWind of the University of Wisconsin at Madison, came up with a wind turbine that doesn't need its own expensive tower. As the guys themselves say, they wanted to make a turbine that can be installed on existing towers, for example, on cell towers, which could then be powered from the energy received.
The WiscWind team is aware of the growing interest in solar energy from the United States, but its project is aimed at other countries, in particular India. Cell towers in rural India can be powered by a public grid, but power outages occur frequently in some areas and local communities have to rely on energy-intensive and environmentally harmful diesel generators. “If we can replace diesel generators with renewable energy, costs will be significantly reduced,” said Scott Williams, WiscWind chief executive and research and education coordinator at the Wisconsin Power Institute.
When the WiscWind team decided on the task, they started designing the future turbine. She decided to use 3D printing technology to make the blades. She originally printed them on a Flashforge 3D printer located in the Sector67 hacker workshop/hacker room/makers’ meeting point in Madison, Wisconsin. The first blades were scaled down and became the template for a series of experimental composite blades.
Shortly thereafter, the team turned to Midwest Prototyping, a professional 3D printing service provider, for help, who printed a set of full-size nylon blades for them on an SLS 3D printer for free. After sanding and testing the new blades, the team turned to Midwest Prototyping again and the provider made another, this time the final set of blades.
The WiscWind turbine has an atypical design: helical (spiral) blades are twisted around a vertical axis. It has fewer moving parts than most wind turbines, which means it doesn't need constant maintenance. “By choosing the vertical axis, we set ourselves a daunting task, but by doing so we demonstrated the confidence and cohesion of our team,” says Alex LeBrun, one of the WiscWind members.
The WiscWind team has already won one victory: its 3D-printed turbine recently won the Audience Choice and Best Prototype awards at the Qualcomm Innovation Competition at the University of Wisconsin Madison. Now she decided to move on. By the way, the winner's project will be presented at an exhibition at the headquarters of the US Department of Energy in Washington.
