Adriaan Kragten contacted me that he’s retiring from his wind turbine design work and has made his designs publicly available. See his web site at Kragten Design Wind Turbines for links to his designs for micro battery charging wind turbines and for his supporting documentation.
I came in touch with him when I was writing the first edition of Wind Energy Basics that came out in 1999.
Kragten, a mechanical engineer, worked for many years with the Wind Energy Group of the University of Eindhoven. His micro wind turbines use easily fabricated metal blades.
Diehard wind aficionados will appreciate his design notes under KD-reports. The reports are both in English and Nederlands (Dutch). The reports include full citations for those who want to know where some of the information came from.
I recommend starting with Sequence-of-KD-reports-for-self-study that explains what each report contains. For example, his report KD 215 is a good take down of Darrieus or vertical-axis wind turbines. On the other hand, Kragten offers design tips for constructing a self-starting giromill for water-pumping applications.
All in all, Kragten’s web site is well worth a visit, especially for students, newbies, tinkerers, do-it-yourselfers, and all those just plain curious about wind energy.
