How it started… (2008 – 2011)

Manufacturing small wind turbines locally has been experimented for decades by DIY enthusiasts. In 2008, Hugh Piggott, a widely acknowledged small wind turbine expert, published A wind turbine recipe book, a detailed manual on how to build six sizes of small wind turbines using simple tools and techniques and mostly locally available materials. Piggott’s robust and adaptable design has been embraced by a variety of actors across the globe – from practitioners to non-governmental organisations, social enterprises and research groups – who have used it for rural electrification projects in developing countries, as well as educational projects elsewhere. Since 2008, the Recipe book has been translated in more than 10 languages, allowing for many local initiatives to spark around the globe. Another design that has been inspired by Piggott’s and has found wide spread in the US, is documented in Otherpower’s manual Homebrew Wind Power, also published in 2008.

The open nature of these designs allowed initiatives around the world to modify and complement them to meet different needs, address different challenges and utilize different resources. Technical solutions to the most common challenges across the globe became available. The need for communication and knowledge sharing between these initiatives and the potential for collaborative synergies gave birth to Wind Empowerment.

Founding Wind Empowerment members in Senegal, 2011

A network of initiatives

Wind Empowerment was established to address this need for networking and global communication. The association was founded in 2011 at the World Social Forum in Dakar, Senegal by 18 founding members, many of whom were meeting for the first time. Today WE consists of more than 50 member organisations – cooperatives, collectives, enterprises, non-governmental organisations, research groups and institutions, training centres, as well as hundreds of individual practitioners around the world. A full list of member organisations can be found in the Our members section.

The decade since…

Wind Empowerment’s production and deployment of small-scale wind turbines has been bringing electricity to remote and underserved communities for almost 2 decades. These turbines can generate power providing electricity where traditional grid extensions are prohibitively expensive or logistically challenging, we have also built a number of water pumping installations as Wind Empowerment almost always implement hybrid systems, beyond having worked on a number of water pumping projects we also promote innovative approaches to prioritising recycled and upcycled materials, as part of a circular economy.

We have built over 1000 turbines since 2011, and we want to build 1000 more in the next 10 years.