Ben - Glastonbury update

[gotwind2]

I have returned from Glastonbury music festival in the U.K, after a tiring 8 days sleeping in a tent in a field. It was all very worthwile though.

Over the 3 day festival, our REchargepod charged 2500 mobile phones from renewable energy, a 500w turbine and 440w of solar. There was a constant queue for the 12 hours we were open per day, one guy waited 4 hours to charge his phone up..

Glastonbury is located in a valley, but a very open space and we would average a 9 m.p.h wind which gave about 150 watts of wind power generally, solar was considerably higher 200-300 watts, but it was June.

The pod took on a new appearance at night, when the bespoke 10 watt LED strip lights and external 5 watt LED spotlights were lit, all powered from renewables.

Further details of the REchargepod on my site

http://www.gotwind.org/orange_recharge_pod.htm

Ben.

[wooferhound]

Man that is Too Cool !!

is it a free service or do you take some payment? Even at a $1 per phone you could pay for more solar panels. Looks like you need to provide the ability to charge more phones/MP3 players judging by the waiting line and the time waiting, scaling up to 2-3 tents maybe. How do you deal with the many verities of Charging Connectors?

[zap]

Pretty neat Ben and I'm glad your REchargepod was a success.

Other than the long lines, did you have any glitches?

Also it looks like the weather was cool in the first picture?

[gotwind2]

Hi wooferhound.

Yes it was a free phone recharging service, whatever mobile (cell) network the customer subscribes to.

I guess money could have been made from a chargable service, but that went against the grain for me - as it was all about promoting free energy (renewables).

With a festival capacity of 180 thousand people the queueing was inevitable, more REcharge pods would help next year.

It makes you realise how reliant folk are on their mobile phones for comunications/text messaging.

Twenty years ago (or so) people seemed to manage o.k with just meeting at a designated time and location - sign of the times I suppose..

[gotwind2]

Hi Zap.

We had an overcast, but windy first couple of days.

To my amazement, not a glitch - 10 months of planning, 2 months of building.

The solar/wind combination worked very well.

When we finished I disconnected the eight 110 A/h leisure batteries they all read 12.7 volts.

A good weekend.

Thanks.

[gizmo]

Thats a great project. You should be proud.

The most important thing I think you have done is opened peoples eyes. All those people who had their phone charged will walk away with a new appreciation of RE, and how it helped them when they needed it.

This sort of project makes a difference.

Good work.

[tecker]

This year personel bugs next year Ice and water .

[wooferhound]

I think this kind of service is missing. The problem is the Charging Time

[snowcrow]

  Great idea and lay-out!! The next step would be to build one for e-bike charging!!!

Blessings, Snow Crow

[ricksure]

Hi Ben

Great job, very cool idea! A question about the wind turbine,

how did you deal with any vibration that it did/might transfer into

the structure.

again great job:)

Rick

[gotwind2]

Vibration did raise a few concerns Rick particularly whith higher wind speeds.

Plenty of rubber dampeneing pads in all the structural connections.

It worked as per our structural engineers figures perfectly, thanks.