As most of Robs friends and family know Rob has three loves in his life:
- 1) his wife, of course
- 2) good beer
- 3) Renewable Energy
Well, being at the Folkecenter has allowed Rob to experience all three of these things in one swoop! Here at the Folkecenter small wind turbines are constantly showing up from various manufactures from around the world in order to get a shot at the Danish test bench. In order to test a wind turbine a load has to be applied to it so that a power curve can be attained. Some test centers do this by plugging the wind machine into a battery with lighting or even by dumping the load using a rheostat. Here at the Folkecenter they came up with a much smarter use of the precious resource of wind- Beer Cooling!
The temperature of Robs beer on any given day is directly related to the speed of the wind during that day.
Unfortunately, in some parts of the world the wind strength in the hot summer months (when you need cold beer) tends to be lower than those in the cold winter months. However, this is not the case in Denmark! Here the wind is always blowing, day night, summer, winter- it does not matter. And Rob, having been here for nearly 3 months, knows how hard the wind has been blowing just by the temperature of his beer. In fact 10 m/s produces a beautiful temperature for beer, roughly 4 degrees C. If the wind is too high we have to be careful as the beer might drop below zero, but so far this has not been a problem as the wind stays around 10 m/s most days.
The beer cooling wind turbine is also connected to a laptop that measures various performance indicators of the wind turbine. These include: power output, RPM, wind speed, and wind direction.
Furthermore there is a saying around here that if your turbine can survive in Denmark it will survive anywhere. The winds of Denmark has provided many turbine manufactures with sobering experiences after attempting to test their mills here.
The Folkecenter has assembled a catalogue of small wind turbines from around the world to make purchasing the correct model easier for consumers. The catalogue contains loads of information, sells for around $60 CND and can be purchased here .
