More Photos and Final Thoughts

I'm finally back at school, and I'm already missing my WindAid family. The people I met in Peru, from all over the world, really made this trip so enjoyable. We all had our quirks, and habits, and exceptional personalities that really blended well with each other. I wish everyone the best of luck going forward and I look forward to hearing about everyone's lives in the future. I hope we meet again one day!

My thoughts on the trip overall: definitely met my expectations. I talked with the right people and really had an excellent idea of what to expect while I was down there. We essentially built a wind turbine, manufactured replacement wind turbine parts, and installed it, all while getting a taste of Peruvian culture. Despite truly enjoying all of the wind turbine manufacturing, construction and installation, I really enjoyed all of the Peruvian culture I experienced in Trujillo, Cajamarca, Huaraz and even Playa Blanca. We packed so much into four weeks and I'm so glad I spent my winter break volunteering and experiencing another culture.

I would absolutely recommend this program to anyone who is interested and inclined to work in an engineering setting in a foreign country. I learned an overwhelming amount of information on wind turbine manufacturing, engineering, and construction. I was able to help with some R&D at times and also got to see all the ups and downs of installing and manufacturing in a foreign country. I would also recommend programs like this to other students, even if it isn't this program specifically. There are plenty of opportunities available to students in foreign countries doing similar humanitarian work. It's incredibly rewarding to be able to give someone the gift of electricity and see their faces as you "light up their life".

I really would like to take this opportunity to again thank everyone who supported me on this trip. Thank you to the offices at SUNY Canton, my professors at SUNY Canton, Tom Woodside, and my family and friends who all knew this trip was a dream of mine to attend. I'm so grateful to have such support behind me and to know so many people are willing to help make a difference in a student's life and educational goals.

I'm officially signing off. Thanks for following my adventure! If you're interested in any other information, or photos, feel free to contact me directly and I'd be happy to share more of my experience with you! ~ Jessica

Please enjoy some more photos from my journey! (Sorry for them being out of order)

Stator before it was fully cast in resin

Pouring resin in the stator

The controls box inside the house our wind turbine
was installed in

The replacement wind turbine was
installed on Wednesday of week 4

The blade assembly of our first installed
wind turbine at a scallop farm

Group photo of WindAid team and some community members

Observing the vacuum and gravity system that pulls resin
through the blade mold to coat the foam core, carbon fiber
and fiberglass blade with resin

Sanding the resin on the Stator

Making sure the blade mold is airtight and ready
for resin by sealing gaps with hot glue

Helping gravity pull the resin through the
vacuum system 

Drilling the center hole through the Stator

Painting the blade, first with primer, then with a white finish

Sanding and shaping the blade

Balancing the unpainted blade

The view from a tour we took in Cajamarca

Our ride to Playa Blanca, the first time!

View at the Pastoruri Glacier

Me and a wind turbine blade

Digging a meter hole for the concre foundation

Update on This Past Week and Departure

This past week was incredible! After our last day in the shop, we headed to Huaraz to do some exploring on our final weekend in Peru. We then finished off the trip with our installation in Playa Blanca. See the below videos!

First, we headed to Huaraz by bus on Friday morning. We arrived in the evening and met one of the Peruvians from the shop in town because he happened to be going to Pastoruri to do some checking up on the wind turbine we were already going to visit. Saturday, we went up to Pastoruri to visit the Guinness World Records Tallest Installed Wind Turbine that WindAid installed back in 2013. We helped the guy from the shop troubleshoot the issue, and then went up to the glacier that was a walk away. Sunday, we hiked to Laguna 69, which was very difficult due to the intense elevation increase and altitude adjustments. We left Huaraz Sunday night and arrived back in Trujillo at 5am to catch a 7:30am bus to Playa Blanca for our final week of installation!

Huaraz Day 1: (Duration: 3:42)
https://youtu.be/WsbuQ7UCe30

Huaraz Day 2 - Pastoruri (Duration: 5:18)
https://youtu.be/ENwkmSJad74

Huaraz Day 3 - Laguna 69 (Duration: 1:52)
https://youtu.be/spqCtBDJT3Q

In our final week in Playa Blanca, we got a lot accomplished! Monday we just set up and acclimated ourselves to the environment once again. Tuesday we installed our wind turbine, which took a lot longer than anticipated due to some unforeseen difficulties. Wednesday we got to work on workshop advancements and turbine base support installations (I was put in charge of working on reinforced concrete slab design this day!). Thursday we replaced the wind turbine which had fallen down previously due to tower rot or termite damage. Friday we departed for Trujillo so we could all catch our flights and buses out of Peru.

Playa Blanca Day 1: (Duration: 2:01)
https://youtu.be/BgbUE9epW-c

Playa Blanca Day 2: (Duration: 3:19)
https://youtu.be/POoem9Eb5Tw

Playa Blanca Day 3: (Duration: 5:17)
https://youtu.be/hPS13VhQGjM

Playa Blanca Day 4: (Duration: 7:37)
https://youtu.be/G6SSWirpTFc

Playa Blanca Day 5: (Duration: 2:07)
https://youtu.be/Q1iRYKJj03s

At this point, I'm home and tired from traveling. I'll recap things within the next few days and give some final thoughts. Overall, I'm super excited I went and could help bring the lights to a community in need!

Final Day in the Shop

Today was the final day in the shop for those who aren't taking a weekend trip!

Sanding the blade

I started out today sanding one of our blades. This blade had a resin, fiberglass mixture to it and needed to be shaped! This included shaping the leading edge and the trailing edge of the wind turbine blade. It was fun I spent most of the morning on this task and the once lunch time came around, I changed tasks.

After lunch, I helped with turning some more coils and watched a blade be balanced.

Blade balancing test

To balance the blade, it is mounted to a typical tower set up and spun. While spinning, we look for imbalances that indicate one side is heavier than the other. In our case, there was one that was heavier than the other. We then proceeded to add some washers to the part of the blade that was under weight. Adding washers, with tape, and moving them around occasionally helped create a guide to balance the blade. Once the blade was balanced, a hole was drilled in the place of the washers and filled with a lead material of the same weight as the washers.

Also, today was time to make the wind turbine tail which includes a WindAid sticker on a board. I didn't participate in making this, but it was super cool.

Wind turbine tail

It was a bittersweet day in the shop because we will not be back to that shop anymore. This also means we are 3/4 of the way done with the program which is pretty sad. However, we have big plans for the weekend and then in Playa Blanca all next week.

My new timeline is as follows: travel to Huaraz this weekend. While in Huaraz, hike to the Guinness World Records Tallest Installed Wind Turbine that WindAid Installed in 2013. This wind turbine is located at 4,882 meters above sea level (Trujillo is at 30ish meters above sea level). While there, we will also visit the Pastoruri Glacier, one of the only tropical glaciers I'll likely see in my life. The next day we will visit Laguna 69, a glacier fed lake that is a bright blue turquoise color. We leave for Huaraz at 9:30am tomorrow and arrive back to Trujillo at 5am on Monday morning. From there, we depart for Playa Blanca on another bus at 7am. When we finish our installation and other maintenance in Playa Blanca, we will depart at a TBD time Friday to return and be able to get people to the airport to get flights out. I depart at 11pm on Friday for an 11am arrival in Toronto on Saturday. This means I won't be able to post any of my video logs until Saturday 01/28/2017 in the late afternoon or evening. I'm assuming I'll sleep most of Saturday when I return, so stay tuned until then.

Thanks for following along so far! The next few days are going to be exhaustive, but I'm super excited to keep exploring Peru! Until next Saturday, Adios!

Videos Finally, Stator Work From Home

Yay! The videos finally uploaded! Sorry for such a delay!

The first four videos are from Playa Blanca, including travel and maintenance work over the four days. The last two videos are from a weekend trip to Cajamarca to see a waterfall and some historical sites. It was an exhaustive last week because we took a 7 hour bus ride to Playa Blanca and then once we returned (after another 7 hour bus ride), we had about an hour and a half to get back to the bus station to catch an overnight bus to Cajamarca. We returned from Cajamarca Monday morning at 5am and then went back to work at 9am!

Playa Blanca Videos:
Day 1: (Duration: 3:05)
https://youtu.be/-Mx0W0fpQXk
Day 2: (Duration: 8:23)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H3esQhfbE4o
Day 3: (Duration: 5:18)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q8AmaRfQWc
Day 4: (Duration: 2:58)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmiQ-lGbU-g

Cajamarca videos:
Day 5: (Duration: 2:26)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TxjLtx4imy4
Day 6: (Duration: 3:07)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4r6zfPKx74A

For today (1/18/2017): I stayed back today. My fever was still prevalent, but I'm feeling a lot better as of right now (2pm). I asked for some work to do while here at the house in between resting and hydrating, and I was tasked with looking up a stator equation and once I find it, to plug it into excel so we can play with number of turns per coil and gauge wire that is best and other factors as well. WindAid is trying to perfect the stator more because it seems to be under performing. It's quite a fun task because I've been working on the stator the last few days, so I kind of know what I'm looking for. Also, my excel skills will be put to good use. Experience from those excel problems Dr. Craig gave me in class will really come in handy as well!

Despite the sickness, I'm still having lots of fun and learning a ton!

Sick Again, Videos Still Delayed

I was very sick yesterday (1/17/2017). I left the shop early around 3pm and slept until dinner, ate dinner and slept until now. I'm feeling a bit better, but I had a high fever and sever exhaustion (I was falling asleep while at lunch and sitting in the shop).

The videos are still giving be problems, so I will do my best to try and keep uploading them and will repost them when I get a chance. Very sorry for the inconvenience. I didn't think it would be this difficult.

Update on the Past Week and 01/16/2017!

As of 2pm on 1/18/2017, day 2-4 and 6 links do not work. See blog for 1/18/2017 for updated links.

As of 7am on 1/17/2017, only day 1 and day 5 videos have uploaded to youtube. The others have links, but the videos aren't ready yet. I hope they finish loading today! Feel free to try out the links in the afternoon, and sorry for the delay! YouTube hasn't been verycooperative.

The following videos are of my travels to and within Playa Blanca which is our installation community next week. We did some turbine maintenance there for four days.

Day 1: (Duration: 3:05)
https://youtu.be/-Mx0W0fpQXk

Day 2: (Duration: 8:23)
https://youtu.be/LIQEUc4fyZw

Day 3: (Duration: 5:18)
https://youtu.be/Qj19PmE2qNY

Day 4: (Duration: 2:58)
https://youtu.be/pLXk2K_QUx4

The following videos are of my exploration to Cajamarca to do some sight seeing. We got off the bus from Playa Blanca at 8pm and then got back to the house to eat and pack for Cajamarca which was more of a cooler and wetter climate than the dusty area of Playa Blanca. We left for Cajamarca at 9:30pm, so we only had a small window to change and then catch our bus.

Day 5: (Duration: 2:26)
https://youtu.be/TxjLtx4imy4

Day 6: (Duration: 3:07)
https://youtu.be/35FEfvDzK7I

Today was a shop day! We got a late start to the day because we had a morning meeting. I spent the day working on sanding the stator and also testing the stator. Our rotor that had the resin issue last week didn't set, so we had to scrap that rotor. We also just started constructing a new rotor to replace the one that didn't set. Welding continued and there was plenty to do!

Sanding the stator

One of the girls from Australia is using this program as a class project for her final year in the university she's attending. Her research project is to examine the strength differences in a rotor with carbon fiber (which is what we currently use) and a rotor without carbon fiber. This is an especially important project to conduct because carbon fiber is the most expensive component of these wind turbines and has to be imported.

We also did some women in STEM empowerment video shooting today! We have more girls than guys in this program, so one of the volunteer coordinators wanted to make an empowerment video to post on social media encouraging women all over to pursue STEM careers. We also said it in Spanish in the hopes some Peruvian girls will feel empowered. WE had a volunteer here for a few days who came specifically to take some photographs of our group and conduct the video shoot during our program.

Quick Update

I am alive still!

I'll be posting six videos either via YouTube or embedded here. The videos won't be more than 10 minutes in length and will encompass the day's activities. I'm still working on uploading them, but stay tuned!

I likely won't post them all until the morning as they are taking some time to download. Sorry for the delay!

Successful Shop Day

Definitely back up to par health wise! Feeling great and still drinking lots of water!

The shop today was pretty good. We had another mishap with the rotor resin. We got back to it, and the tubes connecting to it should have contained hard and set resin, but they were still pretty liquidy. So we popped the mold open, and the rotor still needed to set a bit. We let it go all day and it will get fixed this week while all the volunteers are away.

I helped finish off the stator today! We finished the coil connections by soldering and adding tape to the connections, checked for continuity among the phases with a multimeter and poured some resin in it all before we left!

Stator before resin; coils are soldered under the black tape 

Hot gluing all the potential air openings to ensure a
vacuum seal for the resin process

Pouring resin down the tube and into the stator mold

I also showed someone how to turn more coils because they will be making another stator for an educational purpose.

Sorry for the quick update, but I'm currently packing for the rest of the week in Playa Blanca! We'll be helping with tower maintenance, replacing a rotor and advancing their new workshop with a composting toilet mostly!

I'll be gone until Friday evening, but we will be headed to Cajamarca by bus a few hours after we arrive for another fun weekend! That being said, I'm not sure when I'll be able to post again, but I can assure you they will be quick snippets of videos from the days I missed. I won't be back in Trujillo until Monday morning at 6am when our bus arrives from Cajamarca. Hopefully I'll get to post in between trips, but we'll see.

Huacas Del Sol y De La Luna and More!

Today I was feeling much better! Fever is definitely gone which is great!

The Huacas del Sol on the left on the horizon, the Moche
city in the foreground of the photo

We spent the morning at the Huacas. The Huaca del sol is the governmental temple and the huaca de la luna is the religious temple. The sol can't be toured because it is not restored yet, but we toured the luna so we got to see all the religious aspects of the moche people.

Our view at the top! Having an awesome time!

The various levels of the temple

Preserved colors on walls of two levels of the temple

Outer walls of the temple with various colored artwork

This huaca (directly translates to temple) de la luna (moon) had a sacrificial square, a tomb area, a warrior plaza area and some flat lands. This location was different than Chan Chan in that all of the new temples are built above the old ones, so it's a vertically built temple versus Chan Chan that built new palaces horizontally around and built a brand new palace. Each temple in the luna had 3 priests per 100 years and after 100 years a new temple would be built up.

The archaeologists here have carefully preserved the original colors of the walls that were there when they dug the huacas out of a massive pile of sand. That was the greatest thing to see because Chan Chan didn't quite have any colors. Our guide for this set of ruins wasn't as great as yesterday, but there was a lot more to look at for sure!

Warrior battle ground and story on a painting on the wall

A lot of the focus in this huaca was sacrifice. It was best to lose a battle with another person because that person would get sacrificed to the gods, which was a high honor. Most of the artwork was relative to the decapitation god that was the main god for the Moche people. This temple focused on sacrificing to the gods, especially when they were trying to get the weather to start or stop. They would sacrifice individuals and spread their blood on the earth to fertilize the earth.

Once we got back from the Huacas, we ate some leftover BBQ from yesterday, and spent some time at Huanchaco again! We just got back and are trying to plan our accommodations for next weekend in Cajamarca!

Still having an awesome time and can't wait to get back into the shop tomorrow and continue working. We'll be spending tomorrow in Trujillo too, but we'll be in Playa Blanca from Tuesday to Friday! If we leave tomorrow night for Playa Blanca, I might not post a blog at night, but I will definitely keep documenting things and will likely take some video blogs while in Playa Blanca!

Chan Chan

I'm feeling a lot more energized today than yesterday. I definitely needed all of the sleep I got. The medicine is definitely helping in that my fever was reduced, if not completely gone when I woke up this morning. We all got a late start, I would guess we all needed some quality sleep, but once we were up and out, it was amazing!

We visited the archaeological ruins of Chan Chan today! A quick description of Chan Chan would be the largest pre-Columbian South American city. It's now in ruins. It's worth a google search for further historical information, but I'll share some cool photos and explain them a bit! These photos definitely don't do it justice, and are the lesser quality of my photos, but they were the quickest I could upload today. I have plenty more that have more detail that I may post at a later date.

11 of us went, but today we comfortably took 3 taxis versus stuffing all 11 of us into 2! We arrived at the entrance and paid 10 peruvian soles (3 soles is about equal to 1 USD) for our entrance and then an extra 5 soles for a guide, which was so worth it because we would've never gotten enough history out of it by ourselves. It's not very self explanatory.

The part we toured was one of the nine palaces Chan Chan had. This was the only palace that exists still enough to tour. The reason there were nine palaces was because when a king died, the next king, one of his sons got his own palace, and the rest of the king's family and servants and whatnot were sacrificed to go with him into the afterlife. The king was then buried, in an open tomb, in the palace. It typically took 20 years to build a palace, so each new palace was started when a new king was put in place.

Trapezoidal walls

The palace we visited spanned 11 acres, but some could span as large as 20 acres. We walked around and saw several squares that served as plazas of sorts. This palace had 3 squares, one public square, one private square, and one funeral square. All of the walls were trapezoidal in shape and made with mud on the bottom and bricks on top.

We proceeded to some rooms, which were differentiated by the designs in the bottom row of decoration on the wall. All of the decorations in this palace had to do with the sea, fish, tides, pelicans, moon, etc. Each had a theme of sorts and this one existing happened to be relative to the sea.

Fish and tides wall art on the walk into the palace

Different rooms in the palace, markings on the bottom may
have signified what the room was used for

This palace also had at one point 140 water wells. The last well to be full of water started drying up 3 years ago, and now just looks like a lush garden. It will soon be dry too.

Lush greenery in the one of the old water wells that is now drying up

Open tomb

We then proceeded to the tomb area to see a replica of the mummy in the tomb. The reason the tomb was left open was so they could bring the king around ceremonially every now and again to worship him.

After that, we went back toward the entrance and our ticket actually included a stop at the museum as well. We decided to walk there, which was a 20 minute walk in the peak sun hours, but it was a beautiful day. I got lightly sunburned on my shoulders, but nothing major. We spent a short time looking at the artifacts that were preserved from the ruins in the museum.

View on our walk to the museum, also the mountain we
climbed on New Years Eve!

By the time we were done, it was about 1:30pm and we needed some lunch, so we went to a close mall where we ate a quick lunch at the food court and then went to a supermarket where I bought more Powerade. We knew we wouldn't have enough time to do the other archaeological site because it closed at 4pm, and we needed to be back by 3pm.

We got back, and one of the long term volunteers had started prepping for a BBQ that we all chipped in for. The excuse was to celebrate two birthdays, the long terms from yesterday and one of the short terms which is tomorrow. This BBQ was insane. I never imagined the amount of food we would have: homemade burgers, chicken and beef kabobs, grilled fish, grilled veggies, salad, tuna salad, appetizers of sorts, and more! Despite the awesome food I've eaten so far, my stomach definitely needed some familiar food.

We then played cards for quite a while and I've learned I'm quite good at a game that's called a variety of names: P's and A's, Scum, President's and Assholes, etc. Maybe I was dealt good cards consistently, but I did really well for about 2 hours.

Tomorrow we plan to do the Huacas de la Luna, which is the other archaeological site. Then we might go to the beach if we have time. It sounds like we will leave for Playa Blanca either Monday night or Tuesday morning. It will be about a 7 hour bus ride for us to get up there because we have so many volunteers this time around.

Still Not 100%

Today was so rough. I woke up feeling worse than yesterday, but better than Tuesday. Stool was loose, slight fever/chills were still existent overnight and I could tell I was still dehydrated. I started some traveler's diarrhea medicine which seems to have done the trick, but it made me very sleepy today and I also had a bad headache that I couldn't take ibuprofen for because it would potentially react with the other medicine. Either way I powered through and went to the shop.

Resin on the floor from the vacuum seal failure

Today, we got back to a spilled resin set up for the second blade. Basically, the resin tubes that helped with the vacuum seal broke off of the set up with the resin, so there was no more seal. The remaining resin spilled out and the mold may not have dried. It was salvageable still because it wasn't completely dry, so I'm pretty sure they redid the vacuum sealing process to try and pull the resin throughout the whole rotor. I would guess they will crack the mold open on Monday and see how it worked out. 

Arduino/Raspberry Pi learning station

While the others dealt with that scenario, those of us who worked on the stator yesterday got to take apart our mold today and see how the resin set on the bottom layer. It looked pretty good so we went onto the next step. We also got a crash course in the Arduino and Raspberry Pi technologies that WindAid is starting to use to do some remote sensing. We were allowed to work on that today as well. 

Stator after we opened the mold

The next stator part was to strip the loose wires and connect the appropriate coils to each other. The way the coils worked out were choosing 3 coils closest to the mold hole for the three phase wires, choosing 3 ground wires, and connecting opposite coils in the mold together to ensure an electric current will flow. We spent all of today stripping wires and connecting some of the wires. We ended the shop day early after lunch, which was excellent, because I truthfully would've asked to leave the latter half of the day to sleep because I was so tired and didn't accomplish much today.

Lunch today was excellent, and I'm so bummed I was almost too sick to eat. It was a chicken stir fry with rice dish that was so good, but I couldn't eat that much of it.

We got back around 3pm and I slept for about 2 hours which was great for my recovery. The others either went back to Huanchaco for the beach, or went to a local fruit market to get some exotic fruits. I wish I could've went because I saw photos of the amazing destination and it looked incredible, but I definitely needed to sleep. A bunch of the volunteers and people from the shop went and played soccer when they got back as well. I opted out of playing due to my lack of energy still. It also was sprinkling when they went to play soccer. Rain down here is so uncommon, but it wasn’t anything sizable.

Next week I believe we're in Playa Blanca doing turbine maintenance! I'm not sure when we leave for Playa Blanca, but when we get back into the shop, our next step is to solder our connected stator wires and then pour the rest of the resin to finish the stator.

This weekend we've decided to do some local archaeological sites. I believe we are visiting Chan Chan and Hucas del Sol tomorrow and then going back to Huanchaco beach on Sunday. I hope I'm better tomorrow, and less sluggish to be able to fully experience everything we do this weekend. 

It's one of the long term volunteer's birthdays today, so a lot of the guys and some girls are going to go out and celebrate. As much as I would love to, it would be best for my dehydration and exhaustion not to, so I think I'm staying in so I can be fresh tomorrow! We're having a BBQ tomorrow afternoon too! The BBQ excuse is because of the long term volunteer's birthday and one of the short term volunteers birthday's which is on Sunday as well. 

Recovery!

I woke up today feeling so much better than yesterday. I got some very much needed rest and continued with plenty of fluids today.

I chose to do relatively the same thing as yesterday, so more coils for me! We had two done when we left yesterday and one that needed to be weighed because the scale was broken. We needed six coils to complete the stator. One of the Australian guys (Henry) and I spent all day turning coils. In the morning, he turned one and it came out to 408 grams which was actually usable! The other coil that needed to be weighed was 430 grams! Then it was my turn, and mine was 488 grams, so I unwinded mine and Henry started a new one. His ended up being 482 grams, which was too heavy (limit is 450). Then I did my unwound wire and got it down to 472 grams, but still not low enough. Henry unwound his and ended up at 442 grams! Which was indeed usable. Then I unwound my wire and ended up finally with 434 grams! With that last coil we had all six coils for our first stator! We found it was a lot easier to wind the already wound coils because they are more malleable, which I wondered if that decreased any properties of the copper at all, but they definitely encouraged it so we went with their suggestions.

The coil contraption! This video is from yesterday of the girl who did the 430 gram coil!

At that point it was almost 4pm and we then prepped the stator mold for fiberglass and resin so it could set overnight. This included waxing the mold, kind of like prepping a cake pan for baking with Crisco, then adding an alcohol mixture and letting it dry. This process was used for the rotor molds as well. Once it was dry, we checked the weights of the coils again, cut the circular fiberglass piece and then poured the resin in the mold. We then laid the circle of fiber glass on it and soaked it with the resin before carefully placing the coils on the mold. The coils, since they had different weights, needed to be arranged specifically so they would have the same amount of electrical effect when it's spinning. We lined up some of the highest weights with the lowest weights and then the in between ones were a mix of higher to lower weighted coils. After, we had to bolt the mold shut and make it level so it could set. The others in the last few days set the magnets for the rotor disk and also poured the resin in the second mold. It seems as if we are pretty well on schedule or even ahead!

Some things to note as I see them: there is a Praxair plant here that we pass every time we go to the shop! The people here call foreigners "gringos" so when we got in a taxi to leave the shop (the beast only fits about 9 comfortably, but the record is 15 people) one of the coordinators said, "Don't let the taxi man gringo you! You can always get it cheaper!"

That being said, on the topic of taxis, we went to Huanchaco, a beach, last weekend and fit 6 people in one taxi, which was pretty remarkable. Our landmark for getting back to the volunteer house is the Chifa Chong Wa, which is a Chinese restaurant chain on the corner of our road. It's always interesting trying to navigate the taxis when you barely have enough Spanish to communicate around. All of the vehicles here are manual, not sure if I mentioned that, but the drivers shift extremely smoothly. But there's also lots of speed bumps all over to regulate speed around here since there's usually no posted limit. It's very interesting the skill of all of these drivers, especially because of the insane traffic.


The gas prices here are a bit higher than home at about $4 a gallon. The Australians were saying that's incredibly cheap because they surely pay more than that per gallon. It's interesting how they judge their units here too because some gas stations have prices per gallon, and some have prices per liter.

I really like that they the use metric system here because it is so much easier, but it's sometimes difficult to immediately understand that 20 degrees Celsius is 68 degrees Fahrenheit.

I have yet to see any fire trucks, or stations yet. I saw an ambulance that was pretty similar to our ambulances, but no real fire trucks. The police here is mainly in the forms of security on street corners, but you do occasionally see a police officer.

Overall, today was so much better for me and we continue to have excellent conversation with everyone about their home countries. It turns out I was given false information and the girl who I thought was from Sri Lanka is actually from South Africa as well!

I'll log off for now, but the plan is to do more video blogs when I won't have access to wifi. That way I won't have to recall everything by typing and it won't be as "in the moment" as it could've been. Tomorrow will mark a quarter of my trip down, which makes me pretty sad, but also very excited because we are that much closer to finishing our wind turbine and installing!

Exhaustion

Well the adjustment here finally hit me. I woke up this morning with a possible light fever (basically just very warm), exhaustion, and signs of dehydration. I took some Advil for the fever, and proceeded to drink water and figure out other things I could do for the dehydration. I asked around if anyone had any gatorade or the travel pouches or squeezes of flavoring for water and one of the girls sleeping in my room had some Great Value brand electrolyte additive. I drank that and water consistently throughout the day, but it didn't help my exhaustion any.

Today, I chose the least labor intensive task because I was so tired. And it just so happened to be one of the few things I haven't done already. I decided to work with the coils today! We started off by practicing soldering, which I haven't done since middle school, but still wasn't too bad at. Then we moved onto hand turning the coils! They had lots of copper wire laying around that we put in a turning contraption to make the coils (shown right). The coils for our stator (shown left) had to be 70 turns around, but no more than 450 grams, so they needed to be wound extremely tight. The one I did was 480 grams, the next one was 445 grams and another was 470 (the least weight was usable too). We only got through one more coil, but the scale had broken, so we haven't had a chance to weigh it then. I mostly sat around and tried not to fall asleep today. I thought that was the best option due to my exhaustion in regards to safety for myself and others in the shop as well.

The others in the shop continued practicing welding, electrical component work, and rotor work. We all watched the resin being poured into the rotor mold this morning, and had some issues with the vacuum seal (shown below). We'll see how it turns out when we open it tomorrow. We also have to do the next rotor that I helped make yesterday, so there's plenty of opportunity to continue seeing that. They prepped the rotor I helped with for the resin today by sewing on the carbon fiber and cutting more fiberglass for the mold. It was all set to be filled with resin when we left.

A notable funny language barrier remark: this wasn't even about a Spanish to English barrier, it was an American to New Zealand barrier. One of the shop leaders asked if a girl from New Zealand could use a jigsaw, and she thought he meant a jigsaw puzzle, so of course she said yes, and then when he handed her the saw she was quite confused. It was pretty funny! It's quite interesting seeing the different pronunciations and words for different objects between the countries. I almost feel like I'm going to come back to the US saying weird phrases, or even having a bit of a foreign accent that's not even Peruvian.

The only really annoying thing I will never get used to here is the dog across the street, on the roof of the house who will not stop barking constantly, even at night. It's sometimes difficult to sleep near the window where my bed is, but I'm working on it. I also have some ear plugs for a last resort situation.

I'll end with a photo of the beast I promised. WindAid bought this vehicle from the French Embassy here a while back, decorated it for a spring parade with grass and their logo, and the decorations never came off because they would've ruined the paint underneath. Thus it was further known as the beast!




That's all for now! Still having fun, despite my exhaustion!

Rotor Work!

It was another day back in the shop today and I got to experience rotor construction (the others helped turn coils and weld more)! We poured a foam mold for a second rotor today (the blade assembly is one rotor with 2 blades, all in one piece). This involved cutting fiberglass rotor shapes from a template out of a square shaped piece of fiberglass and then put them in the molds to add the

foam mixture. We bolted the mold together and added the mixture. It was an exothermic chemical reaction and created a sponge candy type consistency of material.

Photos left to right: template tracing on fiberglass sheets, prepping mold for foam, ready for foam before putting the two pieces together:

 

(I have a video of pouring the mold, but it won't rotate and isn't that stimulating unless you really enjoy chemistry and want to see a bottle expand with the excess materials.)

Then, we helped the others put carbon fiber on the rotor that was made yesterday. It was a sheet of carbon fiber weaved together that we needed to sew together around the rotor using carbon fiber strings. This took a long time to complete, and in the meantime, we ate lunch (I had a chicken and rice dish) and came back to our mold which set after 2 hours. Once our rotor was set, we removed the mold, cut away the excess foam and sanded the rotor a bit in preparation for a carbon fiber covering that we will do tomorrow.

Black carbon fiber was sewed over the foam rotor

We also prepped the mold for the resin injection of the first rotor. This involved waxing the mold a few times, adding alcohol of sorts to the mold, cutting more fiberglass rotor shapes and adding silicon to the outsides of the mold to ensure an air tight seal when we finally put the molds together.

Once the carbon fiber cover was finished on the first rotor and the mold was ready, we placed the rotor in the mold again, and proceeded to make this mold air tight. The reason this needs to be airtight is because the resin that will be injected will be spread out in a vacuum system. To keep this mold air tight, we put an amazing amount of clamps on the outside, bolted the mold together, hot glued over all the bolts and then hot glued the cracks where the two molds came together. Then we cut some tubes to connect to the vacuum contraption that will draw the resin through the rotor mold. We’re doing this tomorrow, so I’ll have more info on it then.

Resin injection mold is sealed shut

Before we prepped the resin injection mold, I helped work on the magnetic rotor disk which helps make up the alternator. This was particularly interesting because the magnets we needed to place had to be opposite poles in the center of the circle, so if one was north in, the next had to be north out, etc. We checked each magnet every time and once we got to the 6^th magnet, we rechecked and there was only one magnet that was north in. We could tell by holding another magnet above all of the placed magnets to make sure it’s the opposite pole in. Finding this issue was strange because it was as if the magnets completely changed polarity. It was pretty interesting because we super glued the 5 previous magnets to the magnet bottom piece, so it was difficult to get them off the plate that had resin on it. We redid the resin that was on the disk, and let that set and will revisit this tomorrow.

Magnetic rotor disk assembly

We got back to the house, and had dinner (potatoes, veggies and some sort of tofu), and just as we finished, the power went out! It doesn’t seem a rarity, but it also doesn’t seem like it’s common. I’m super happy I brought my solar powered lantern from the Clarkson Sustainability Day because I brought it out immediately and it allowed us to play cards before going to bed! The power being out is also why I’m late in posting this blog; no power, no wifi. It was out for about an hour and a half.

It's super awesome I got to experience so much today! Looking forward to continuing tomorrow!