Product Description

Updated version of the best selling step-by-step guide to designing and building a wind generator from scrap and recycled parts.
Windpower Workshop provides essential information for the individual wanting to build and maintain a windpower system for their own energy needs.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #13790 in Books
• Published on: 2000
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 159 pages

From the Publisher
What the papers say about this book
"Every so often books come through that are a refreshing change from the norm. Windpower Workshop is just such a book." Electronics and Beyond, The Maplin Magazine

"The author is a true guru of the art." Positive News

From the Author
this book has been reviewed by Paul Gipe, renowned US author
Windpower Workshop .... by Hugh Piggott

Reviewed by Paul Gipe:

Finally, something to supplant Michael Hackleman's aging classic Wind and Windspinners. Windpower Workshop by Hugh Piggott is a welcome addition to any small wind turbine library and is a must if you want to build your own wind turbine or, as the British say, "Do It Yourself."

Windpower Workshop is a 1997 release in the Centre for Alternative Technology's series Anglicizing small wind turbine publications for a British audience. For more than twenty years CAT has been demonstrating the use of alternative technology from water power to wind turbines at their center in an abandoned slate quarry in central Wales. Windpower Workshop grew out of Hugh's lectures at CAT instructing people on how they can build their own low-cost wind machines...

I immediately liked Hugh's organization of Windpower Workshop. He's one of the few writers on wind energy that has had the guts to put a discussion of safety right up front where it counts. Hugh relates a literally hair-raising tale of an encounter between Mick Sagrillo, our own small wind turbine guru here in North America, and a whirring Jacobs generator. (Mick still can't stand the sound of velcro.)...

Some of these micro turbines, such as the Marlec, use what Hugh calls "air gap" generators. Hugh explains how these mysterious little generators work, answering questions that I've had for years.

Since I am in the process of erecting my own mini-wind turbine I found chapter 8 on towers especially useful, notably Hugh's description of the TirFor hand-operated winch. TirFor is the brand name for a grip-hoist puller or winch. There are several other brands on the market but they all pull a steel cable through the body of the winch rather than wrapping the cable around a spool. They come in a range of capacities suitable for most small wind turbine applications. Best of all, they're portable. You can carry one of these hand winches into areas where you would never get a truck or battery-operated winch.

Windpower Workshop includes a comprehensive list of British consultants, dealers, and manufacturers of small wind turbines, a seven-page glossary, and a useful list of equations in the appendix. What sets these formulas apart from those in other books on wind energy is their presentation. Hugh helpfully provides them in a form suitable for keying into a spreadsheet so the reader can make their own calculations. Do-It-Yourselfers will greatly appreciate that gesture.

Windpower Workshop, says Hugh, was "written for those who want to build their own windmill and for those who dream." It's books like this that keeps the dream alive.

Customer Reviews

Very good introduction to windpower
Roughly 2 weeks after purchasing this book I was able to put together a rudimentaly windmill that although isn't generating any power yet, will run in the wind I designed it for, direct itself into the wind and most importantly will move itself out of a wind that is too strong.

Very good book.

catch the wind
building wind turbine made 'easy', well, with a little practical knowhow as well. clearly explained. lets you decide which mill is meant for you, then helps with purchase -v- d.i.y. not buried under mounds of maths.

Engineering speak
I bought this book to help me with a project on an OU course and was well rewarded. Although written in Engineer speak for Engineers it is full of useful information about wind energy that is not always included in the classroom course work. It is also refreshingly written in 21st Century Metric values for modern Engineers, not a foot or a yard in sight.