Students from the Lodz University of Technology GUST, designing home wind turbines, participated in a competition organized by the Dutch Delft University of Technology. The modular skew blade turbine generated a record amount of electricity and secured the designers second place in the International Small Wind Turbine Contest

The Lodz team assumed that, as is the case with solar panels, also wind energy can be produced by individual consumers. Students presented a home four-blade wind turbine with a horizontal axis of rotation, in two versions with different blade geometry.

The prototype produced over 1 KWh of electricity with a wind of 13 m / s. This is not only the best result among all participating teams but also the team’s record for seven years of activity.

The innovation of the project of the students from Lodz is the idea of reducing the size of wind turbines for use in the home area. Another innovative solution is the modularity of the turbine and the use of 3D printing.

“Thanks to the modular structure, when the turbine part is damaged, the consumer is not forced to replace the product with a new one. Such a 3D solution allows replacing the defected part with a new element, which means a significant reduction in the costs of servicing and maintenance of the turbine”, says project leader Anna Baszczyńska.

Canadians from the University of Toronto won the competition. Students from Lodz were ahead of engineers from Egypt, Denmark, Germany and the Netherlands.

GUST (Generative Urban Small Turbine) is an interdisciplinary project carried out by members of the Students’ Scientific Club of Power Engineers at the Institute of Fluid-Flow Machinery of the Lodz University of Technology, participated by the students from other faculties.

Arkadiusz Słomczyński