Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Wind Generator Plans - DIY

Wind Generator Plans - DIY

With more of us realizing that energy prices are headed nowhere but up we've decided to take measures to reduce our energy bill. The problem is that renewable energy still costs an arm, leg, and your spleen to get. That's why we decided to build our own renewable energy system starting with a wind generator. We figured that would be the most cost effective way to generator a lot of electricity.

The problem was we needed some wind generator plans. The first plans that we bought seemed to be by a guy that wanted to prove that he was smarter than us. We couldn't understand a single thing he was talking about.

The next couple sets of plans that we bought were too simplistic to be of any real use. That's when we decided that we should develop our own wind generator plans to help the average person build a wind generator.

The problem, according to many people is that it seems like such a complicated project. I mean, your putting up a wind generator that you built yourself. All of those parts have to come together and it has to work. That's what seems daunting.

It's a lot easier if you think of a generator somewhat like separate modules. You have a bunch of little things that you have to build. Each part doesn't take a long time, but it's quite easy. As soon as you take this step building your wind generator seems like a piece of cake.

Let's start with the blades and hub. This is a fairly straightforward task and only involves a little cutting with a jig saw and some drilling. You'll need some 8" PVC pipe which gets measured and cut. I did say PVC pipe... we discovered that cut right it works great as blades.

You'll need to sand them down and coat them with some UV protective paint as sunlight makes PVC brittle. We snapped a couple blades before we figured this out. The blades get mounted to the hub (usually a pulley) and you've finished them.

The body can be made from leftover PVC that you have from building the blades. The motor gets mounted in the one end and the tail gets mounted in the other end. The body's main job is to keep water out of the motor. On the bottom of the body you'll need to mount a flange. Attached to the flange is some 2" steel pipe. This allows your wind generator to be mounted to your tower.

Your tower is simply an old TV tower. We discovered this quite by accident actually. I was at a friends helping him re-shingle his house and climbed down the TV tower to the ground because the ladder fell down. It hit me... these were very strong and I could probably get it for free.

He gave it to me because he'd switched to satellite a couple years ago. You'll need to dig a foundation and pour some concrete in it to mount the tower, but it's not really that hard. All you need to make sure of is that your tower is level... no leaning towers here.

Once your tower is up, climb up and mount your wind generator (TV towers conveniently have a 2" hole in the top for mounting). It seems to be the law that whenever you're working on a wind generator it's never windy so you might need to wait a couple days before any wind comes by.

That's pretty much it... simple wind generator plans can make the task much easier than you think it is.

I built my own solar panels and a wind generator and saved well over $30,000. I get a cheque from the power company because I produce more energy than I use. If you'd like to learn how you can do the same check out Wind Generator Plans.

Sunday, January 17, 2010

Home-Built Wind Generator Power - What You Need to Know

Home-Built Wind Generator Power - What You Need to Know

The majority of people who are researching residential wind power are looking for an answer to a particular question on renewable energy such as information on home-built wind generator power, do it yourself wind turbines or vertical wind turbines.

Homebuilt wind generators come in many differing shapes and sizes from vertical wind generators through to the single blade wind turbine however all have one common goal and that is to produce wind power energy. The following is important information that you should know before considering which wind generator is the right choice for you.

Can you build your own wind power generator?

You bet! And the best news is that you don't have to be Tim 'the tool man' Taylor to take on a project like this either. Building your own home wind turbine is something that can be done on sliding scale from small wind turbines that power small appliances all of the way through to large wind turbines that can power entire communities.

I have had many people send me pictures of their completed residential wind turbines who have had almost no experience in construction or do it yourself projects.

What type of wind generator is right for me?

Ultimately this question can only be answered by you. The most common turbine for home wind generators is the Horizontal Axis Wind Turbine. The Horizontal Wind Generator is usually constructed as a pole that raises a three or four blade fan into the sky.

The Vertical Wind Turbine is also becoming a more common wind turbine design for residential wind power configurations due to the way the turbine blades spin. The vertical axis turbine is comprised of a center pole with blades that spin on a vertical axis meaning that it will require less room to operate when compared to the horizontal wind turbine.

What does a home-built wind generator cost?

Wind turbines can be constructed out of a range of materials that can be found at your local hardware store. You can build your own wind turbines for as little as $100 using the easy to follow wind turbine below which will take you step by step on the way to building your own wind generator.

Still not sure if residential wind power is right for you?

The best suggestion that I can make to you is to have a look at how simple these wind generator plans are and simply have a go. The materials to produce homebuilt wind generator power are inexpensive and the construction time is minimal - why not invite your friends around and start a wind turbine project?

You'll end up saving a huge amount of money on your electricity bills and will have your own home-built wind generator to be proud of. Get started on your new turbine with our easy to follow wind turbine plans.

Barry Lee is the author of the popular wind power website Residential Wind Power which provides fantastic information on vertical wind turbines and wind generators for home use.

Tuesday, December 15, 2009

How to Build a Wind Generator - DIY Wind Power For Your Home

How to Build a Wind Generator - DIY Wind Power For Your Home

Why would you want to learn how to build a wind generator for use at home?

Although there are a wide range of benefits that are acquired from creating wind energy at home, the two most important reasons of learning how to build a wind generator are financial and environmental.

Financial, because of the horrendous free fall of the economy and its effect on our pockets and environmental, because if we don't start helping ourselves, our planet will be changed forever as we know it. If we could all make diy wind power for home use, we could in some way help ourselves on both fronts.

It would be impossible to explain how to build wind generator in this short article but this is how you basically go about making one.

1. You can make blades out of household items. Wood/plastic.
2. These blades have to be fixed to the wind turbine/generator. The turbine turns wind energy into mechanical energy. The generator turns that mechanical energy into electrical energy.
3. A shaft to fix the blades to the tower, letting them rotate freely.
4. A tower to keep the whole assembly high enough to make optimum use of the wind.
5. A base to keep everything in place.
6. The generator feeds its electrical energy into a charge controller or charge regulator. This limits the rate of current that feeds into your bank of batteries thus helping prolong the life of the batteries.
7. A battery bank.
8. An inverter. Your battery bank will have stored DC (direct current). This is no good for domestic appliances around the house as they require AC (alternating current). The inverter converts DC to AC electricity.
9. The AC needs to be fed into your electricity control panel. This is where by means of transformers and circuits, the correct voltage and frequency for domestic use is output.

Note. At point 6, if you want to add solar energy to give you another source of free electricity, it can be connected to the charge regulator to boost your power. Good quality plans will not only give you the blueprints on how to build wind generator, but will also include plans on how to build a solar power system as an added bonus.

Diy wind power and solar power blueprints cost about $50 or so and explain how to build your alternative energy systems for as little as $200 each. With the cost of pre constructed wind generators starting at $600, good reliable ones at $2000, several diy wind power systems could be made for the same cost plus the blueprints are always there for you.

They can be fantastic projects to carry out with family, are a lot of fun to make and are totally satisfying to complete. There are many good motives to build your own wind generator and solar systems but hardly any reasons not to.

Make use of the free, environmentally friendly and renewable resources the surround us and don't let them go to waste.http://www.homemadewindturbineplans.com

If you are interested and would like to find out more on how to build wind generator and solar power systems, please visit how to build wind generator.

Sunday, November 22, 2009

DIY Wind Generator For Cheap and Uninterrupted Power

DIY Wind Generator For Cheap and Uninterrupted Power

Wind is a type of solar energy. The irregular heating of the atmosphere by the sun, the irregularities of the earth's surface plus rotation of the earth causes winds. This wind flow or wind energy when "harvested" by modern wind turbines can be used to generate electricity.

DIY Wind Generator: Principals behind the working

When wind moves over the turbine blades, it generates a lift. The lift makes the blades rotate and hence rotate the shaft. The rotating shaft moves a magnetic field in the generator which in turn creates electricity.

Wind turbine include following parts:

  • Gearbox - Gear box connects the low and high-speed shaft to each other
  • Blades - wind blowing over the blades causes them to lift and rotate
  • Hub - the sphere object used to mount the blades on
  • Generator - Generator creates at least 60-cycle AC electricity
  • Tower - Tower is the metal pole the turbine operates from. Tower is at least 100 feet off the ground so that the turbine can capture the least turbulent wind
  • Rotor hub - Rotor hub is the hub and hold the blades together
  • Yaw drive - Yaw drive is required only for an upwind turbine; it keeps the rotor facing the wind
  • Yaw motor - It provides power for the yaw drive
  • Nacelle - Nacelle sits on top of the tower and clings to the gear box
  • Low-speed shaft - It is turned by the rotor at a rate of 30 to 60 rotations every minute
  • High-speed shaft - It connects to the generator and drives it
  • Anemometer -Anemometer is used to measures the speed of the wind

DIY Wind Generator: How it works

Wind turbine generates electricity by spinning a generator. This generator is connected to the rotor, which is made up of three blades, which is then attached to a tower. To make the turbine face the wind, the rotor has a tail, which works as weather vain.

Our DIY Wind Generator is generally an electric motor. While the coils in the motor spins past the magnets, an electric current is produced. The power which is produced is stored in batteries, which are then connected to an inverter that changes the DC to AC, which can then be used to power your home.

DIY Wind Generator: Where to Place Them?

Preferably you should put your wind turbine where it's going to catch the maximum of wind. This implies that fewer the obstacles around your wind turbine the better it would be. The higher you can put your wind turbine the greater electrical output you will get.

Take care not to put wind generators right next to your house or under a tree. Try to find a place where the wind whips all the way through, and that's the place for your wind turbine.

DIY Wind Generator: Size of wind generator

As different Sizes of wind generator requires different Start speeds. So it is very important to consider the start speeds, which depends on the size of the wind generators. Larger wind generator starts at higher speeds in comparison to the smaller wind generator which requires lesser speed.

Wind generator generates electricity only when they spin. You should rather have two smaller output wind generators spinning than one larger one sitting stationary.

So opt on to wind energy which is inexhaustible, cheapest and eco-friendly renewable source of energy.

Ralph Somers, editor of DIY Wind Generator Forum.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

Building a Wind Generator

Building a Wind Generator

Building a wind generator is not a difficult task and you will be surprised to know that hundreds of thousands of people across the globe are producing electricity from their own home made wind power generators.

Electricity from renewable sources such as solar energy and wind energy are much cheaper and at the same time if you adopt these, you will definitely save our environment from pollution and global warming.

Actually you can buy a ready made assembled wind generator, however the cost of it will be in the rage of a few thousands dollars. The advantage of building a wind generator is that you can assemble it within $ 200 and therefore you have a potential to save thousands of dollars, which otherwise have been spent on buying the ready made generator.

Before you actually plan for building a wind generator, you will need to know the advantage of it especially the cost benefits of the generator. A wind generator requires space and height for installing the tower and blades of the generator and depending on the wind speed, these blades will move and will convert the wind energy into electricity.

Therefore before building a wind generator, you should also ensure that in addition to space, the wind speed in your area is also sufficient enough to produce electricity. If the average wind speed is below 5 miles per hour, the wind generators are generally not economical.

So, if you are sure that you get sufficient wind speed in your area, although most of the people live in areas where wind speed is sufficient to produce electricity, you can try building a wind generator at your home.

Start building a wind generator with the help of a guide available at Internet. If you follow the instructions given in guide, you can easily build a wind generator and produce free electricity.