Together with a photovoltaic system the windturbine is used as a renewable source of electricity for village households. The electricity gain is relativly constant because sun and wind energy are ideal partners. For us it was very important to employ a windturbine that also makes use of low winds to carge the 12Volt car battery. The windturbine starts runnung at a wind speed of 2m/s an delivers electricity from 2,5 m/s (9 km/h) . Usually small windturbines start at 3 to 3,5 m/s . This windturbine produces about 100W peak from a wing area of 1.2m diameter.

At peak power of 100W one could run 14 energy saving light bulbs of 7W each. But wind is rarely constant therfore the produced electricity is saved in car batteries and whenever needed the electricity can be drawn from the battery.

The windmill consists of:
a disc -type generator
3 reinforced plastic wings
and a pole

Generator:
The generator is kept simple: It mainly consists of two metal plates to which 12 round magnets are glued in circular shape. The plates are mounted with a distance between them on ball bearings (rotor). In the gap between the discs with magnets there is a plastic disc into which coper coils are cast - the stator.
The three wings are directly conected with the metal plates. They drive the generator and produce an electric field by moving the magnets past the copper coils. This induces electricity into the coils. The faster the movement the higher the amperage.

Wings:
The wings are designed after ship turbines and constructed to use even low wind speeds.
Dieter Münich, who has years of experiance with such turbines, designed them and allows us to use the concept in Afghanistan.
Herr Wolfgang Stör, a member of ABS, optimised the wings in Germany and developed moulds for them. He went to Afghanistan in august 2005 and trained to afghan partners of ABS for the production of the wings from fiber reinforced plastic. Now the wings are produced in Bedmoschk at the Centre for Renewable Energies.
The first series of 10 windturbines has been manufactured and is installed at our model village Bedmoschk for endurance testing .

Pole:
The pole is a 4m long 2" water pipe. At the bottom of the windmill we have an adapter that gets inserted into the pole and is fixed with a bolt form the side. The pole is stuck into a container filled with concrete and sand and anchored sideways with wire ropes. Usually the windmill is instaled on the flat roof tops. As the houses are mostly built on hill tops there is always good wind. Thats why 4m is enough height for the pole.