The Oasis Windmill

This small windmill is a French product by the company ECOLAB Energies. It is quite common in countries of former French West and North Africa (countries like Algeria and Mauretania). According to the manufacturer’s website (link), over 20,000 have been sold. The WOT got the windmill from the wind energy research group “CWD” after they finished compiling a test report.

The Oasis is on the small side with a tower height of only 6 meters. According to the documentation, there are or were multiple variants sold with towers up to 12 meter high.

The Oasis has a traditional storm safety system that uses a side vane and a spring-loaded main vane. At high wind speeds, the side vane pushes the rotor out of the wind as the main vane furls away. At low speeds the spring pulls the main vane back straight behind the rotor. There is also an ingenious manual brake system that at the same time: blocks the rotor, blocks the yaw bearing and also furls the main vane. Windmills designed by WOT don’t have a brake system and also use a technically simpler storm safety, which has only one (vertically furling) vane.

The pumping depth on the WOT terrain is low, the Oasis does not sit on a well but rather on a concrete tub at ground level. Therefore, a fairly large pump cylinder has been installed to simulate deeper pumping depths. For testing purposes this is a PVC cylinder and the piston also has PVC (vinyl) seals. See video below (outdated – recent maintenance has greatly increased pumping yield).