playa blanco

the main street in playa blanco

our first stop was to check on the old turbine

one of many games of football

camp with our new friends

the kids were amaaaaazing

After SEACORPS we headed 30 minutes further up to coast to the small seaside settlement of Playo Blanco. The settlement consisted of 50 families living along a cliff that drops into the Pacific Ocean. There are two WindAid turbines installed here, both on a voluntary basis. One powers 4 houses, whilst the second powers the school (but is currently not in operation due to a short circuit in the electronics of the school). There is no running water...which meant no toliets or showers. Whilst we were not here to do any work, we were able to pitch camp on a cliff about 100 meters from their settlement on Tuesday and Wednesday night.

The families at Playa Blanco are super friendly with everyone from WindAid. The turbines here are some of the oldest and volunteers have been coming back on a regular basis for years. Because of this, the kids that live here are super, super friendly, engaging and demanding of our time! As soon as they saw our crazy green car, tons of them started running along the sand towards our camp.

We laughed, we chatted, we played A LOT of football. What amazed me most was the strength, bravery and freedom the kids expressed. Health and safety is a complete joke in Peru, but we were staying atop a 20-30 foot cliff face into the ocean...these kids ran, tripped, play fought and generally caused mischief all within feet of the edge. My heart jumped on more than one occasion.

Also, while I´ve mentioned the fact that Peruvians, for the most part, are on the small side, I couldn´t get over how mini most of these kids were! And all were so young. We played a great game of football with about eight two - seven year olds on one side against 2 of us volunteers on the other. Unsurprisingly, the little mini team won!

While these families are poor, their kids are healthy, happy and free to run around and explore a wildly beautiful landscape day and night. It really made me stop and think.

seacorp

our ride up, nine in the car no problem

seacorp camp

windaid's first boat mounted turbine

We started our trip last Monday night, piling nine deep into our trusty/not so trusty land rover for the seven hour drive north. We were headed to the desert region of Sechuria, close to Piura, Peru.

We had two wind turbines with us, in addition to our luggage, tools, tents and sleeping bags. Unsurprisngly, the car overheated within the first two hours of our trip! The ´beast´as she is affectionately known takes a serious beating driving fully loaded through the Peruvian desert (I don´t think it helps that Nick, WindAid volunteer director and our loco driver thinks all roads in Peru should be driving like a rally), and overheating turned out to be a pretty regular occurance throughout our trip. 

We finally reached our first site, SEACORP about 4am where we slept under the stars on the front porch. SEACORP is a sustainable scallop farm, that employs 34 people on a full time basis. They were the first commerical buyers of WindAid´s large wind turbines and have two installed which fully powers their seaside camp. Additionally, they have the first boat mounted turbine which gives power to two guys who sleep 20 days on, 7 days off to patrol the waters and prevent others from stealing their scallops.

More after the jump!

our week away

Hello friends!

We are back. We successfully survived our week in rural, northern Peru and had an amazing time. I'll be posting about our trip this week...there is so much to share.

It is hard to believe, but we are going into our last week with WindAid. Tomorrow is the beginning of our fourth week here and it is amazing how quickly the time has gone.

Our plan is to spend this week back in the workshop and to try and find time to see all the sights we haven't managed to check out. It should be a busy week.

Hope you enjoy this week's posts!

x
Morgan

end of week two

closing the mold

testing the pipes before pouring the foam into the mold

mixing the chemicals that make the foam, the reaction happens in seconds

finished blade

We have had a rough week in the workshop. We were supposed to finish at least one complete turbine, ready for our trip next week. Due to a number of issues, it just didn´t happen.

We did manage however to successfully make a turbine blade(!) as well as complete the two plates that generate the electricity; a metal plate topped with eight magnents set in resin and a resin mold filled with six hand turned copper coils.

To make the most of our unsuccessful week and celebrate what we did manage to complete, we decided to take the weekend off and head south into the mountain town of Huaraz. It´s a seven hour night bus and we are leaving tonight! We will have a long weekend in Huaraz, before taking a night bus back to Trujillo on Monday.

I am super excited for this trip. It will be nice to get away from Trujillo and finally see a little bit more of Peru. Updates to follow!

building a turbine

resin poured and setting

danger! laying the exceptionally strong magnents. there was blood.

gas masks necessary

hand turned copper coils

testing a blade

We have had a slight change of plan. Instead of building and installing one turbine, our group gets to go on a week long tour of northern Peru, performing maintenance on three turbines (in addition to installing our own). Yay!

Whilst it is super exciting to know that we see so many turbines in action, this means we have to bust our butts  in the workshop this week, finishing our turbine before we head off.

There are a number of different parts needed to make the turbine and today we focused on the core. There are two plates that make up the center core of the blade, a metal plate filled with resin and set with eight super strong magnents, and a second plate, filled with six copper coils, the ends of which are soldered together and then the entire plate is also set in resin.

It took us about a day to complete these two simple pieces, most of the work done by hand. The two pieces are arguably the most important part of the turbine, as it is the copper coils passing over the magnets (when the blade spins) that create the electric current. Who discovered that passing a copper coil over a magnet creates an electric charge is beyond me. But it is amazing to see how much science is involved in making this work. Working here has really made me realise how little I know about pretty much anything that has to do with electronics, but it is awesome to learn!

maintenance in chuquitoy

putting up the scaffolding

getting higher

almost at the top

a well deserved lunch break

done! the windaid crew

We spent Friday at Chuquitoy, fixing the second turbine that had fallen askew due to wind. Today, we came on site much better prepared! We brought our own scaffloding, back up power for our tools and had prepped a steel pole with holes drilled into it already (massive time saver).

Thanks to our preperation, we were able to get the scaffolding up, get the turbine down, swap the steel poles, drill into the wooden post and put the whole thing back together again in just about four hours. Massive improvement on yesterday!

It is hard to believe it has only been a week since I landed in Peru. We have already fixed two turbines, vistited a third and spent three days in the workshop building pieces for the turbine we will install in a few weeks time. Looking forward to the weekend and exploring a bit more of Peru!

maintenance in cantera

taking down the blade

thinking if a ladder inside a dump truck is really the best way up

yup, it is the best way up

project complete

The wind turbines we build for WindAid are super simple is structure and as durable as we can make them. The turbines are installed in pretty inhosptable places, battered by wind, dust and goodness knows what else.

Luckily for us, the later half of this week, we got to head out to two sites and perform maintenance on two turbines installed a few years ago. Whilst both were still working, it seemed the wind has pushed them off center, decreasing the amount of energy they are producing.

On Thursday, we drove an hour outside of Trujillo to the desert town of Cantera to try and fix the first turbine. We hit our first challenge almost immediately - to access the turbine, we were supposed to have access to a large CAT tractor that would lift us into the air - as the tractor was not working, we improvised, using a wooden ladder placed inside a dump truck (for height) parked next to our turbine!

Once up to the turbine, our plan was to drill two holes into the steel pole and through the wooden post, through which we could pin the turbine in place using steel screws. Unfortunately however, no one had really thought through the fact that once the turbine stopped running, we had a limited amount of power to run the power tools needed to drill the holes! Problem solving skills at the ready, we managed to high jack electricity from an old truck battery.

I suppose it should have been expected, but due to our own lack of planning, a few surprise challenges and the general pace of work in Peru, what should have taken a morning to fix ended up taking close to seven hours. But at the end of the day, this little house on the outskirts of town had their power back thanks to us and thanks to the wind.