Hugh Piggott in the news

[Oldgreybeard]

See that Hugh Piggott has made the BBC News: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland- ... s-62686916

I spent some time at Scoraig many years ago now, on one of his DIY wind turbine courses. Never forgotten it, have always wished that we lived somewhere where wind was a viable option. I did adapt his alternator design for a home made generator some years ago, though. Wish I'd kept it, as the way things are going a generator could be handy.

[Moxi]

what was the prime mover for your home made geni ?

Moxi

[Oldgreybeard]

what was the prime mover for your home made geni ?

Moxi

An old lawn mower engine! We had a big old rotary mower and the deck rotted out whilst the engine was still sound. I made a square tube frame up, complete with wheels, with a plate to hold the engine at the top and the Piggott alternator and two big leisure batteries in the base section. Worked a treat for emergency power. The prompt for building it was the big storm of 1987, that took the power out for several days.

[Moxi]

I recently sold a petrol generator, had it for years and used it twice, I keep reminding SWMBO that its gone (guess who was the instigator ) just at the worst possible time.

Truth is though it wasn't the most efficient or reliable of designs and I am more comfortable with things I have put together as I have the knowledge to maintain etc.

I have been collecting parts and have the HP wind manual for building my own alternator and plan to run this via shaft drive from a home made version of an aermotor style turbine, its very long term - more so now we have 3 under fives in the house again.

I did also toy with the idea of a steam driven prime mover at one point but i think thats me just hailing back to Trent class power station days

Mind you before I do any of that I have to shorten the DC side of the mobile array and increase the gauge as they have been running noticeably warm in the summer months - this will hopefully increase yields in the shoulder months when the array will come into its own once again.

Moxi

[Mr Gus]

You lot will have to start a new lister thread...

[Moxi]

Trust the BBC to make them look like an old hippy commune, hardly the face of modern renewables is it ? There are plenty of more up to date photos of Hugh and some of the turbines that they could have used ?

Moxi

[Oldgreybeard]

Trust the BBC to make them look like an old hippy commune, hardly the face of modern renewables is it ? There are plenty of more up to date photos of Hugh and some of the turbines that they could have used ?

Moxi

To be fair, most of them up on Scoraig when I were there were pretty much a hippy commune. The majority were an eclectic mix of people from all over the place, living there to get back to nature, escaping their own demons, or whatever. I'm pretty sure that Hugh Piggott single-handedly transformed the place by developing DIY power systems that would work well there.

[Mr Gus]

The sort of island where battery & wind energy deployed on both small & large scale would give a lot of insight, perhaps it's time for Hugh to get some lottery money for the island , mine the data for insight & small scale wind & battery for hm's island dominions throughout the world, ..The money grant givers would be falling over themselves for a row through the palace door & potential honours off his labours.

[Oldgreybeard]

TBH, there's nothing really revolutionary about any of the stuff that Hugh Piggott has designed and built, and the early stuff followed what others were doing at the time, hand built wooden blades connected to truck dynamos. The significant breakthrough was his easy to DIY build alternator design. Key to that was coming up with a low RPM axial flux design that pretty much anyone could make with readily available parts. Bit tedious winding the coils, but the finished alternator is extremely robust and sealed from the elements.

[Moxi]

Precisely why I like it, nothing complex, straight forward to build and when built well, pretty bomb proof and maintainable.

Moxi