Project Windmill

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Note 10/17/2003 - These pages were originally located at: windmill.hampshire.edu
I am not actively working on this project and have also long since graduated from Hampshire College so I have archived the site here for long term storage. - jared

Hampshire College has a student-built, vertical-axis windmill on campus that is constantly turning, but currently not generating any power.

Project windmill is a plan to repair the windmill and make it power a web server. Ideally the web server will transmit web pages wirelessly using the 802.11 wireless standard.

10/24/2000 - The windmill project has become more generalized into building "indepedent entities", I've made a more general project called "Solitude". From now on I'll likely be making updates there (http://solitude.hampshire.edu) unless the news or data is specifically related to the windmill.

10/16/2000 - Yesterday I learned that "Wind and Windspinners", the book that was actually used to design Hampshire's windmill, was available all along in Hampshire's library. The book is long out of print so I didn't expect it to be available. Michael Hackleman also wrote "The Homebuilt, Wind-Generated Electricity Handbook" which Hampshire also had, so I took both out. I've scanned in, and touched up, a few diagrams from the book which show the barrels and how they are arranged. They are available in the gallery. "Wind and Windspinners" focusses mostly on savonius rotors like the one at Hampshire.

Yesterday I also came by a power output graph in "More Other Homes and Garbage", that actually included a savonius rotor. The power output is VERY small in comparison to other wind turbines. According to Hackleman, the Author of Wind and Windspinners, the output will be around 10 kWh per month. You can read more about this, here, in the question and answer section of the project page.

It's nice to finally have a number, but sort of sad, as that low number is what I was fearing. I've suspected all along that a solar panel would also have to be used, but if the solar panel is supplying almost all of the power to the web server, it doesn't really make sense to even include the windmill. In New England, when it's not sunny, it's often windy, which makes a Wind/PV hybrid system work quite well but only if the wind part is actually supplying its share of power.

10/15/2000 - Several updates to make in the month since the last news. The windmill project is morphing daily. I still want to see Hampshire's windmill survive and actually do something. But do to my little knowledge (which is slowly growing), and lack of funding, I'm taking several side roads which will ideally prepare me for working on the windmill. The big side road right now is Hampshire's new weather station which I mentioned in the last news snippet. Because I got involved with the project late, they decided to go ahead with connecting the weather station with buried wire. But there is still interest to make it wireless so I'm continuing research and involvement in the project as it is the most practical use of wireless right now. The project construction is coming along. The trench has been dug and the data and power lines have been brought in. The rest of the station equipment should be in shortly. Once it's all tested, it will be put up and ready for data acquisition. The data is going to displayed on the web. It's going to be located here: weather.hampshire.edu. Steve Roof is going to put up a simple explanation of project there shortly.

Stuff I've been doing in the last month?

I've started attending Fred Wirth and John Fabel's class called Sustainable Technology. Fred has been teaching the class for several years and it's actually the one class I sat in on when I was a Hampshire prospective. I have a conflicting class on Wednesday, so I'm only able to attend on Friday's. But we're going over several fundamentals that I need to learn and finding out about several useful resources. Fred has set up a course web site here.
Reading some good books on sustainable living and technology. The New Independent Home, Wind Energy Basics, More Other Homes and Garbage (out of print), and The Good Life.
Yesterday, Corin and I went on a Solar homes tour. We visited three homes in the Brattleboro, Vermont area. The most impressive was an off-the-grid house made of straw bails. They have site about the house here. They use solar and wind to provide all their power. The third house we visited was owed by a couple who has a solar business called Sunnyside Solar. They have solar electric but are still connected to the grid. We got to see their meter actually going backwards, meaning they were generating more power than they were using and that excess was being bought by the power company. On our way home, we stopped at the Northeast Sustainable Energy Association's headquarters, but it was late and they had all gone home. They are the folks who organized the solar homes tour for the Northeast.
I met with Larry Archey, Director of Operations, regarding actually doing work on the Windmill. I need to come up with a written plan for the windmill. They will then okay it.
I met with Gerald Bohdanowicz, Director for Finance and Accounting. He informed me about the "Community Development Fund", which is a small amount of money available for projects such as fixing the windmill up. Unfortunately, the committee has dissolved, which means I have to get a couple students and faculty together just to get the funds.
Got Bob Crowley to bring me on the roof of the Library to see the possible future site of a wireless antenna. It was beautiful up there.
Been trying to track down various people that sell wireless equipment. The sales person at Aironet (Cisco) was clueless, and Orinico has been shuffling me around.
Got a electricity meter from Fred Wirth to measure the amount of energy a laptop consumes.
Got an old laptop from Josiah. It has 4 MB of memory and seems pretty flaky. Not sure if it's going to work as a prototype.

09/12/2000 - It's been a while since I updated the site, but I have been making progress. I finally got around to putting up 3 new pictures in the gallery that Lee Watkins took two years ago. Thanks Lee.

Today I very briefly spoke with John Fabel. I have to get off my butt and make what I'm doing into an independent study for Hampshire. More talks with John on Thursday.

John also directed me to Steve Roof who happens to be setting up a very cool weather station. The plan is to have the data stored and available via the Web. I'm very interested in not only getting wind data, but helping out with the setup. I mentioned getting the data transmitted wirelessly. He was interested. However, the device that measures precipitation needs to be heated in the winter. According to Steve, this will require more power than a solar panel could provide. Therefore, they have to dig a trench and wire it with power. While they are at it, it probably makes sense to run a wire for data transmission. I walked to the proposed site, and there are quite a few trees between it and the library. In addition to this data source, Steve told me that both Mt. Holyoke, UMass, and the nearby Army? base have weather data which probably includes wind information. I stopped by the local airport on my way home, but they don't keep records.

I got a chance to talk to Bob Crowley, the network administrator. He's interested in wireless possibilities and even mentioned a few other applications that it could be used for.

In the past week, I've been working on setting up a wireless network for Hampshire's Airport Lounge. They are going to have 6 wireless computers available to for students. If the project becomes popular, hopefully Hampshire will speed up it's move to wireless.

And the rest of my time has been spent working, moving to Northampton, and school. Hopefully things will settle down a bit and I can give more attention to the project.

08/26/2000 - I visited Hampshire last Wednesday and spoke briefly with Bob Crowley about the wireless network set up. He wasn't sure about setting up a base station in the closest Enfield Mods. There apparently isn't a particularly good spot to store it and the trees also may reduce the signal. Because I've successfully connected from about 700 ft with a Line-Of-Sight we talked about the possibility of setting up an antenna on the top of the library. The library has a fantastic line-of-sight with the windmill. What makes it interesting, is that if an omni-directional antenna is used, others could connect wirelessly from outside.
I also met with John Fabel and discussed several topics. John led a group of students a couple years ago which attempted to make cosmetic changes to the windmill including the new siding. I'm attempting to contact those students to see where they left off.

08/15/2000 - I'm quite busy with work right now, but yesterday my AirPort base station and card arrived. Today I tested the range out. While in Line of Site I got roughly 700 feet away and still had a decent connection. The iBook has a built-in antenna but the AirPort base station has no real antenna. It's possible to hack the base station to add an antenna, but there may be no need.

more news...

Questions & Comments: jared@wonka.hampshire.edu | Page last modified: 10/24/00