The extraordinary true story of a Malawian teenager who transformed his village by building electric windmills out of junk is the subject of a book, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind.
The teenager had a dream of bringing electricity and running water to his village. And he was not prepared to wait for politicians or aid groups to do it for him. The need for action was even greater in 2002 following one of Malawi’s worst droughts, which killed thousands of people and left his family on the brink of starvation.
Unable to attend school, he kept up his education by using a local library. Fascinated by science, his life changed one day when he picked up a tattered textbook and saw a picture of a windmill. “I was very interested when I saw the windmill could make electricity and pump water. ”I thought: ‘That could be a defence against hunger. Maybe I should build one for myself’.”
When not helping his family farm maize, he plugged away at his prototype, working by the light of a paraffin lamp in the evenings. But his ingenious project met blank looks in his community of about 200 people. “Many, including my mother, thought I was going crazy,” he recalls. “They had never seen a windmill before.”
Shocks
Neighbours were further perplexed at the youngster spending so much time scouring rubbish tips. ”People thought I was smoking marijuana,” he said. “So I told them I was only making something for juju [magic].’ Then they said: ‘Ah, I see.’”
Mr Kamkwamba, who is now 22 years old, knocked together a turbine from spare bicycle parts, a tractor fan blade and an old shock absorber, and fashioned blades from plastic pipes, flattened by being held over a fire. ”I got a few electric shocks climbing that [windmill],” says Mr Kamkwamba, ruefully recalling his months of painstaking work. The finished product – a 5-m (16-ft) tall blue-gum-tree wood tower, swaying in the breeze over Masitala – seemed little more than a quixotic tinkerer’s folly. But his neighbours’ mirth turned to amazement when Mr Kamkwamba scrambled up the windmill and hooked a car light bulb to the turbine. As the blades began to spin in the breeze, the bulb flickered to life and a crowd of astonished onlookers went wild. Soon the whiz kid’s 12-watt wonder was pumping power into his family’s mud brick compound.
‘Electric wind’
Out went the paraffin lanterns and in came light bulbs and a circuit breaker, made from nails and magnets off an old stereo speaker, and a light switch cobbled together from bicycle spokes and flip-flop rubber. Before long, locals were queuing up to charge their mobile phones.
Mr Kamkwamba’s story was sent hurtling through the blogosphere when a reporter from the Daily Times newspaper in Blantyre wrote an article about him in November 2006. Meanwhile, he installed a solar-powered mechanical pump, donated by well-wishers, above a borehole, adding water storage tanks and bringing the first potable water source to the entire region around his village. He upgraded his original windmill to 48-volts and anchored it in concrete after its wooden base was chewed away by termites. Then he built a new windmill, dubbed the Green Machine, which turned a water pump to irrigate his family’s field. Before long, visitors were traipsing from miles around to gawp at the boy prodigy’s magetsi a mphepo – “electric wind”. As the fame of his renewable energy projects grew, he was invited in mid-2007 to the prestigious Technology Entertainment Design conference in Arusha, Tanzania.
26 October 2007
Architect Chetwood Associates has applied for planning for a £2.5 million “wind dam” in Russia.
The dam, which would be located over a gorge at Lake Lagoda in north-west Russia, includes a cup-shaped spinnaker sail, believed to be the first of its kind, which will generate renewable energy by funnelling the wind through an attached turbine. The spinnaker shape is similar to the mainsail of a yacht, and is thought to be particularly effective in capturing wind. Project architect Laurie Chetwood, said that the shape of the sail was influenced by functionality and a desire to produce something “sculptural”. He added: “The sail looks like a bird dipping its beak into the water, which will be much less of a blot on this beautiful and unblemished landscape. “But it is also highly effective at capturing the wind because it replicates the work of a dam and doesn’t let the wind escape in the way it does using traditional propellers.”
If granted planning, the dam will be 25m high and boast a 75m span when it goes on site next year. The practice is also looking at applying for planning permission for a similar scheme at another gorge, further up the valley.
-Source bdonline
The world record wind speed in a non-tornadic environment was set in the United States in 1934. This world record wind speed still stands unchallenged today at 231 mph as measured by a heated rotation anemometer. The winds were so strong the anemometer was reported to have broken.
Others have argued that a wind gust of 207 mph at Thule Air Force Base in Greenland would actually have been higher because of where it was measured. Even so, nothing beats the amazing wind speed of the highest recorded wind in a tornado. That record was determined via Doppler Radar near Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The wind speed was an incredible 302 mph on May 3, 1999.
This Scale is used everyday by kitesurfers but the man who created it has been forgotten by many. The scale was created in 1806 by Sir Francis Beaufort, an Irish-born British admiral and hydrographer. Francis Beaufort had a lifelong keen awareness of the value of accurate charts for those risking the seas, having been shipwrecked himself at age fifteen due to a faulty chart. The Beaufort scale is also widely used in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Macau, however with some differences between them. Taiwan uses the Beaufort scale with the extension to 17! 17 must create devastation everywhere if you look at the picture below of what a 12 should do.
