Debate to action climate change event

Today we took the wind turbine to the debate to action event on climate change at city hall Cardiff. We made an interactive exhibit using the wind turbine generator with a crank handle to power 5 halogen lights a radio, a bubble machine and a motor. A feat that saw us up until 3 the night before soldering away in Suneils garage.

The halogen lights were turned on and off sequentially at different voltages programmed by an Arduino. Essentially a modification of the dump load controller using an Arduino to control the switching voltages instead of the opamps. We've given it the name Adaptive Load/Energy Controller:


Here's a video of the setup in action:

Adaptive load controller from Trystan Lea on Vimeo.

The exibit seemed to be a great sucess both because the technical side came together in time and worked! and because the kids seemed pretty interested in it and got involved and so it was a great day!


Now that we have the adaptive load controller built it can be used for testing the DC current sensing circuit and can be used with the turbine erected.