Old Irish blade (1950s)

[TerraSolis]

Hi All,

I'm not quite sure if this warrants a new topic, but I thought it might be of interest to people.

We installed an 11kW wind turbine on our farm in the west of Ireland back in 2012. At the time, an elder in the local community told us that, in fact, there used to be a wind turbine in the same spot many years ago charging batteries.

This year we were renovating a shed and one of the old wooden blades was found. How cool? Newspaper archives indicate it may have been in operation in 1950 as reference was made to the house being lit electrically before the national grid extended out this far.

[DamonHD]

Wow!  Renewables tech archeology!  Thanks for the share.

Rgds

Damon

[bigrockcandymountain]

That is very cool.  Thanks for posting. Very nice tight grain wood and a big machine. 

I would have thought that the wood would be more rotten. 

Almost every farmyard around here had a jacobs 32v system before the power lines came.  They were smaller than what is pictured here by quite a bit though.

[mbouwer]

Curious about what kind of 11 kW wind turbine you have now and how it performs.

[TerraSolis]

Curious about what kind of 11 kW wind turbine you have now and how it performs.

It's a C&F 11 (Irish company, now closed down their wind ops). Performs like a dream - output is amazing out here. If there's moderate winds out she produces like a CCGT flat at max output all day. Beyond me to service it though, so there's a cost there.

[SparWeb]

Interesting.  I am even more curious than that, so any more details you can offer, I would enjoy reading.
Did the generator survive?

[TerraSolis]

Interesting.  I am even more curious than that, so any more details you can offer, I would enjoy reading.
Did the generator survive?

Sadly I have no further info at the minute - if I find anything, I'll be sure to report back here!

[XeonPony]

Looks like a GEO222 Profile, from what the pics show.

[kitestrings]

Very cool, and a good conversation piece.

It looks alot like the Winco Wincharger turbines that we used to frequently see, and work on, though they were smaller too as I recall.  It looks like it may have similarly had (front) edge flashing of some sort.  The Winchargers had thin copper flashing wrapping the leading edge.

Thanks for sharing this.

[sean_ork]

Many 10000s of those installed all over the UK, a good few still running.

[mbouwer]

Do you have one yourself or do you know someone who has one and can you tell us something about it?