Chispito

Our home-made wind generator, Chispito, has been out of action for a little while. Its PVC blades broke last spring and we haven't had time to fix them. The wind we would get in Terlingua was stronger than here, but it was steady. Here we get tremendous gusts, and those sudden bolts of power broke our previous blades a couple of times.

So, this past week, Abe made a few adjustments. Instead of its previous design, which was a horizontal axis machine, he converted it to a vertical axis generator. The conversion was fairly simple and the new blades he designed have a strong metal framework, and then a metal skin and a PVC scoop attached to it.

It probably won't produce as much power in lighter winds, but it is much stronger. Besides, we don't really get much in the way of light winds. It's usually calm here or windy as hell.

Our wind season is fall and spring, and the fall winds have just started. After he'd put it up it didn't stop turning for two days straight. It's great to have Chispito back in action. It seemed sad and incomplete for our property to be without a wind generator.

We'll put more photos here, but for now there's just a little video.