The Nepal Project

Aerogenesis owner David Wood in Nepal

Aerogenesis's owners are privately funding a research and development project undertaken by a small company in Nepal, KAPEG, which stands for the Kathmandu Alternative Power and Energy Group. KAPEG was founded by C. Lamichhane, P. Ghimire, G. Shrestha and P. Freere, who were members of an energy research group from Kathmandu University. The aim of the project is to build a small turbine which maximizes the use of local materials and resources. Nepal is one of the poorest countries in the world and the cost of importing renewable energy equipment, such as photovoltaic cells, can be a major obstacle to their implementation.

Low rpm small wind turbine is ready to install on the top of 12m lattice tower

The turbine is designed to produce 300 Watts at a wind speed of 8 m/s. The blades are hand carved from a Nepali timber called Lakoori. One problem is that there is very little information available on the mechanical properties of Himalayan timber and this makes it hard to design blades with adequate strength. Aerogenesis and the University of Newcastle is helping KAPEG to establish these properties.

David Wood lecturing in wind turbine aerodynamics at Kathmandu University

Hand-carved wooden blades

Generator testing

The permanent magnet generator was designed to minimise the cogging torque - the torque required to turn the generator by cutting the flux of the magnets - in order to have good low speed performance.

Full Load performance of double-rotor PM Generator charging a 12V battery

Erecting the tower

Local children being assisted with their homework by KAPEG engineer Pramod Ghimire.