Farm Update 23-Nov-2017

1. The wind pump and tower painting with Green and Aluminium paint has been completed. The support structure dismantled and vendor informed to take and go.

2. The pump is not connected. It may be connected to the borewell today.  The foot valve had been overhauled. Subbu told the windmill is running freely. Hope it will run on load. Not much wind though.

3. The small anemometer that was long back dismantled will be fixed in the tower.  This was the instrument that helped me decide before I brought the windmill.

4. Vegetable is a sorry story.  None of the vegetable is growing properly. As per Subbu seeds of pumpkin or snake guard has not even sprouted.

5. I asked him to destroy and create raised bars with tractor. Subbu is also planning the same.

6. I suspect right amount of moisture is not there. Sprinkler is the best option. I have been asking him to experiment one. He has to weld a sprinkler head on a tripod so that it becomes portable.  I will follow.

7. Spoke to Aunty to check when she is coming. She got inspired and gave many ideas. One of which is making a film or documentary on organic farming.  I said all that later. Now it is important to generate and sell vegetables. Word of mouth, few pamphlets and a flex board should do.

8. Subbu said he will buy more seeds today in Tirunelveli. His other profession is a television cable business. Due to lightning some of the cable junction boxes had broken.  So he is going to Tirunelveli for some work.

9. We need to plant more trees. I inspired him to hire volunteers from schools.  Told we can support. Let us call local Village officer and create any activity and connect.

10. Like any other project this vegetable selling business is going to take its own time. Patience. Patience. Patience.

What you measure may not be what you want to see

Wind Speed for 315 days. Verticle axis shows Wind Speed  in meters per second on a day.
Note that wind "speed" is less now, but in fact wind is blowing high with "force"

It has again and again been proved that statistics is a lie. A damn lie.  We see that in corporate offices and news papers every day. A nicely laid string of numbers or graph may not and need not reflect the ground reality.  Be it stock market, farmer's suicide, GDP growth, Sales or any other. They (Statistics) only touch one angle of any issue. For presentation purpose it is further simplified and made to appear more trivial. But ground reality may be much more complicated, having so many dimensions to it.  It is this reason why many of the solutions fail because they attempt to redress only a part of the problem by simply looking at what has been presented to them. Probably giving raise to a new problem or side effect.

The anemometer  installed in my Farm at Nachankulam has so far run 23985 kilometers since January, 2014 After assembling all the figures upto 15.06.2014 from the anemometer, and putting togather on paper of 315 days of observation, it is surprising to find that the moving average speed at any given day is going down. It

Water splashing due to heavy wind

indeed was down in May, but in June when I went to install the Wind Pump the wind speed was so high that everything was flying.  The windmill was rotating so much that we could not properly assemble the parts. We had to arrest its motion by tying a rope to the propellers every time climbing atop the tower.

Water was splashing before reaching the ground, transmission rods were hitting against the frame,  and dry wind was blowing so much that you cannot talk or hear freely. Big Iron gates of the farm if kept open were being pushed by the wind, and it took two people to hold them back.   Every 5 minutes you will head for drinking water bottle as the wind was so high and dry it will remove all moisture out of you.

Yet the same period is shown as poor wind period in the above graph.  Anemometer cannot be faulty as I saw it was rotating fast. The counter was also clicking. What is the difference ? apparantly when the graph showed high variation during the day and night, the reality was that the wind energy was less. Now when wind is blowing at with high energy, the wind speeds are consistently showing as less.  Note that it is very consistent now.  The day/night variations are not much.  Subbu has an observation on this. He says now the wind is swirling and changing directions often now.  Earlier it was consistantly coming from one direction, perhaps fast.

I think now the wind is blowing with more volume and force, but not necessarily faster. So anemometer will show only wind speed and not wind energy.  Need to think if we are measuring the right thing. I am also not sure if there is a meter to measure the wind force in volume and not in speeds.

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Dancing Wu-Li Masters - Wind Speed at Nachankulam - Update for 50 days

"The Wu Li Master dances with his student. The Wu Li Master does not teach, but the student learns. The Wu Li Master always begins at the center, the heart of the matter"

When I took the update on Animometer reading dictacted by Subb from 1500 Kms away and created a graph, I was wonder struck.  I was bit anxious as i was noting down. Because i had placed order for wind pump only based on 20 days of study. The meter has so far run 9485 Kilometers in 50 days.

Nature has displayed its own elegance and beauty.  The Wind Speed is observed high in the night and low in the day time. The contrast is striking. How is that the wind energy oscillating on surface of earth so perfectly to the rhythm of Day and Night ?!. I am wonder struck and happy to learn that I have adequate wind in the night to run the wind pump which is going to be installed in a month.  That is a privilage you cannot get in Solar.

50 Days of reading from 1st Jan to 18th Feb, 2014

Closer examination shows that wind speed is constant during the day time. It is during the night that it picks up. On the day I visited the farm (30.01.2014 at 12 noon), the meter was showing 5842. That entry is missing above because we did not record it as we were busy which explains the gap in between.



I took this photo when I visited


The wind speeds have easily exceeded 8 meters per second on few days, which was not the case in January. Anemometer moving parts were tight at that time ?. I cannot rule that out. But graph shows it otherwise. In fact anemometer should have rusted and dusty in 50 days and its performance should come down without lubrication.But what we see is otherwise.

Well I also had another mental correction to digest. On my visit I observed wind was coming from North to South. Contrary to my assumption that it should come from South West (Kerala). Or is it wind is changing direction during night and day. ? I donot have measurements for that as of now.

 



The First Anemometer readings - wind speed measurement on Farm.

Now the Anemometer is working fine. Subbu discovered a small switch that had disengaged the meter. Now it is working fine after it was pushed back. Subbu and team  made an easy ladder path to climb up the tripod pole made out of Casurina poles connected with wooden steps and plank, at a height of 19 feet and says he enjoys staying over there.  Cool. 

The below are the anemometer readings that have been received from him.  The anemometer has counter measuring in xxxxx.yy where x is in kilometer and y in meters. He said he was waiting or y counter to come to zero before noting down. Then I corrected him and asked him to give two digit decimals also as it is without waiting unnecessarily.  Otherise they will become nervous. First three columns are inputs. Balance are calculated by me over excel sheet. 

 The first Anemometer readings.

Date	Time	meter Reading	Time interval in Hours	Incremental Distance Kms	Speed (KM)/ Hour	Speed Meters per Sec
01-01-2014	06:00	0	0.0	0.00
01-01-2014	17:00	343	11.0	343.00	31	9	day
01-01-2014	18:10	361	1.2	18.00	15	4	day
02-01-2014	11:00	625	16.8	264.00	16	4	night
03-01-2014	09:00	745.6	22.0	120.60	5	2	day/night
03-01-2014	11:00	793.5	2.0	47.90	24	7	day

I am not sure if I have done the calculations correctly. But common sense is saying it is reasonable. As per this measurement I am getting a wind speed comfortably above average.  3 Meters/sec is considered slow and 4 Meters/Sec is considered medium speed.  Surprisingly the internet is not having any information regarding the actual field measurements made in our part of country (or for that matter anywhere else) inspite of the fact that there is so much of hue and cry about wind energy and crores are being invested in.

The good news is that these speeds are at 19 feet height / 6 meters.  The actual windpump rotor if purchased will be at 15 meters height.

Another finding is that speeds at day time is high and night speeds are bit low. I cannot conclude anything now, but need to watch for atleast next 30 days before taking a big decision - wheather to buy a windmill or not..

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Wind Energy

Having decided to fully explore the renewable energy sources for the farm, one of the proposals at the back of the mind was the Wind Energy.  I have seen many wind mills all over the place. Thirumala Hills have plenty of them. South of my native place, the entire villages around Aralvaimozhi is filled with wind mills generating commercial electricity.  The wind blows through a gap in western ghats from Kerala in those places.

Bu they are very giant size wind Mills. I believe each of them costs around Rs. 1 crore or more.  Not affordable.  I need a tiny and efficient one.  Searching the internet, one will find very few of them. The practical experience of purchasing and installation wind pumps of reasonable size are mentioned in few blogs like Point Return. 

Recently I chanced upon a manufacturer TinytechIndia in http://www.tinytechindia.com  located at Rajkot, Gujarat.  I am attracted by the simple and bold philosophy of its owner Shri Mr. V K Desai - For Renewable & Solar Energy.  He is marvellous.

This is TinyTechIndia Wind Pump

Has invited me to visit his plant and I am scheduled to travel next week to get a first hand experience of watching few things. a) Steam Engine b) Wind Pump  and c) Solar Concentrators.  All these are time tested, vintage technologies that will never fail. I am going to try atleast two of them.

Presently it is important to measure the wind speed at the farm. For this one needs an instrument called Anemometer. After doing some study and enquiries, I found a cheap and best anemometer in the market manufactured at Nashik. I have enquired for a "Cup Counter Anemometer".  This instrument will be tied to a pole and eracted in the farm. There will be a physical counter which will advance as the spindle rotates due to wind. Once a week we need to take the readings from this counter and estimate the wind speed or volume for the given time.

I just donot want to take a chance and want to be sure that there is some wind movement at any time of the day.

Anemometer : Courtesy Internet

The preference of wind over solar is that the wind is available day and night.  I just need some wind everyday to pump water from a depth of 40 feet.  My idea is that if giant size wind turbines weighing several tonnes can be rotated by wind, why can't a simple sail based fan run properly. Specifications say that we just need 10feet/sec wind speed. I want to measure this.  I hope to do this from next week, once the instrument reaches the site.