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Sep 2001
Windmills for pumping water
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Aureka is Auroville's
oldest metal workshop specialising in sheet metal enclosures for
computers and hospital equipment. It is equally active in the field of
renewable energy systems and alternative building technologies.
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Windmills for pumping water
have been designed and built in Auroville since the early pioneering
days. The present AV 55 windmill is a state of the art machine, which
has some highly sophisticated features integrated into its design.
Outstanding is the matching valve, developed by the Technical University
of Eindhoven in the Netherlands, which allows a windmill to start
without any load and to operate at low speed. Aureka got the benefit of
this development through an accidental visit from one of the Dutch
technicians, who impressed by the work, convinced the university to give
the know-how for free. In return, Auroville agreed to act as an
independent test-site for them.
The economic advantages
notwithstanding, windmills for water pumping do not sell like hot cakes.
"The initial investment is too big for the average farmer,"
says Robi, a Swiss designer who heads Aureka. "If you look at the
life span of say 20 years, windmills are highly economical and cheaper
than a diesel pump. But a farmer doesn't look at it this way. He will
calculate that a diesel pump and an engine costs him now Rs.20,000 (US$
450), and that he has to spend yearly some money on diesel. He cannot
come up with Rs. 1,5 lakh (US$ 3,200) to put up a windmill. Even if a
farmer is in a position to obtain the central government subsidy of Rs
45,000 (US$ 950) and the Rs 20,000 (US$ 450) subsidy of the Tamil Nadu
government, he still has to come up with Rs 85,000 (US$ 1,800) which
most often is still an impossible high sum."
Nevertheless, Aureka does a
nice windmill business. "Our average sale outside Auroville is now
about 12 windmills a year. Since 1988, more than 60 machines have been
installed in various places in Tamil Nadu and in three Tibetan refugee
settlements in Karnataka.
Windmills count for ten to twenty percent of Aureka's turnover. But it
is active too in other renewable energy areas. "We manufactured the
stands for the solar pumps ordered by Aurore [see the article Providing
renewable energy services elsewhere in this issue] and recently we are
constructing the Eurodish, a big moveable solar bowl where the heat is
used to drive a Sterling engine in the mirrors' focus. This is an order
from the Vellore Engineering College for particular applications.
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