BRIEF OVERVIEW

The purpose of this project is to build wind turbines using recycled materials which would be used to supply enough electricity to a city in Tanzania, East Africa.The wind farm will be constructed along the Rift Valley on a site located between the region of Njombe and Iringa called Makambako. The climatic conditions, the geological base, and the seismic conditions are propitious on the site for such project. It is anticipated that the Project will require a total of 1,500 hectares and will provide enough energy to a population of around 10,000 people. The mean wind speed of the site is assessed to be around 8.6 m/s.  Due to the high cost of manufactured turbines which usually cost around 1.3 million dollars, the goal of this project is to build wind turbines using reusable materials. One of the positive outcomes of this will be customer affordability especially of a country such as Tanzania. Even though the poverty levels have decreased in the span of eighteen years, 30% of the population is still affected by poverty. The initiative of this project is to use local resources to the country in creating wind turbines, therefore eliminating  a transportation budget. The abundance, malleability, expense and strength of the materials to be used would have to be taken into consideration. A thorough environmental study would also be done to accommodate for the setup of the turbine in the vicinity so it doesn’t affect the daily lives of the people who are going to be living in the area close to the turbine. The other technical challenges that could be encountered are ensuring a working generator in the turbine through time to time servicing, ensuring complete control of the energy storage system of the turbine and finally ensuring a smooth and safe transfer of the energy created to a center that will distribute the electricity around the community. Lastly, a prototype of how the end product of the wind turbine would look like would be built to show the intricacies of the project. 

Figure. Showing one possible design of a recycled wind turbine

The idea of building recycled wind turbines in Tanzania came from a research study in which it was claimed that underdeveloped countries faced issues such as poverty, depletion of resources, and lack of electricity. It was found that a even today, 15% of the population lacked electricity and the most efficient way to provide electricity was via wind energy by designing and constructing a wind powered turbine using reusable materials.

The major tasks in this project included researching, planning, purchasing and setting up of materials as seen in Figure 1. However, having to successfully construct a model of the wind turbine to function properly as anticipated was a challenge. To overcome this, a set of deliverable were set up which ensured that time was managed wisely and deadlines met. Research on the cost and materials was utilized to construct the prototype. In addition, obstacles that might hinder the completion of the prototype of the wind turbine would be resolved with use of available resources such as online videos, online resources papers detailing thorough information about wind turbines and advice from professionals that have experience with the intricacies of the project. That being said, with the amount of time devoted to project, it is expected that there will be a functioning model of the wind turbine and a detailed presentation to effectively demonstrate the uniqueness, quality, and innovativeness of the project.