Well, wind turbine testing hasn’t gone particularly well so far. After setting up a ‘windmill workshop’ and building a scaled down model of the turbine, we then had trouble finding a fan that we could use to generate enough ‘wind’ to test the design.

To start with we bought a propeller type fan on ebay but when we connected it all up we found that it just threw air out of the sides rather than the front, so the airflow wasn’t uniform – there was a dead spot in the middle, right at the point where we really needed the strongest airflow!

Then we tried a big extractor fan thinking that more power would do the job, but no, we had the same problem. We even tried building a makeshift wind tunnel around the fan to try to channel the airflow forward. Didn’t work either.

So now we are trying a centrifugal fan (also from ebay) rather than a propeller type. The hope is that this type of fan will produce a more uniform airflow so that we can continue with our testing. If it doesn’t work, then we’re stuck as I’m out of ideas! Suggestions anyone…?