Kilo What?

Kilo What? was a project for the Institute of Physics Lab in a Lorry. It comprises a dolls house with a number of appliances, each that is represented by an LED. The devices can be powered from the grid, from solar panels on its roof or from a wind turbine. The user can select how to power the devices and how much power is being used from each of the sources and monitor these - the levels are calibrated to be as near to 'real-life' as possible.

The solar panels work and can be put to use with lights on the lorry.

The wind turbine actually forms a major part of the experiment in its own right. Users can make their own blades or use a variety of pre-designed blades, adjust their angles and adjust how many are used. Users can understand how wind-turbine designers need to get a balance between making the turbine turn in low wind, and getting it to turn as fast as possible. The output of the turbine is shown with LEDs but is also fed into the house and converted into kW for the users.

The final part of the experiment is that users can turn on or off a number of power saving measures in the house and watch how this affects the power consumption as a whole. They can see what they can actually power using the renewable sources and how much power (relatively) the high-power devices such as the tumble drier use.

All elements of this exhibit were designed and assembled in-house after initial discussions with the client about concepts. The dolls house was bought off-the-shelf but almost everything else is bespoke, including all electronics, graphics, and the mechanical design including some interesting work on the wind hub, which allows the blades to turn and fix but still be remove-able.

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