How to Build a 17-ft Wind Turbine

agentfive writes "The people over at Treehugger have found an amazing little article on how to build a 17ft - 3kW+ output Wind Turbine. Apparently this is the latest project of OtherPower.com and the site has a variety of other engergy saving/producing projects including a Homebrew Maytag Gas Battery charger."

Comments

Re:huh?

[AKAImBatman]

and what use might a windtunnel in my apartment be? It's not like I'm designing fighter-jets or the new Ford here.

Wind Turbine, not Wind Tunnel. You can stick it on your roof and run a cable to your computer. Poor man's power, as it were.

Don't feel too bad, though. I misread the headline the first time as well. :-)

Bad link

[kitzilla]

Bad link in the article text. It's here.

Otherpower.com Rules!

[Coocha]

I've been following the work of the Otherpower.com folks for a while now. They're damn good DIY engineers. Not only are their wind turbines quite nice, but my interest was also piqued by their use of single-cylinder Lister engines. Coupled with a biodiesel recipe, it looks like they can run their entire shop for 8 hours on a single gallon of carbon-neutral gas.

One of my lifelong goals is to live simply, on a large plot of undeveloped land somewhere. I'm glad there are people like the Otherpower folks who are paving the way as far as alternative energy creation, and being considerate enough to document their work as they go.

I submitted this

[WormholeFiend]

with a more accurate headline.

The website doesnt really show YOU how to build one.

Rather, it shows you photos of the various steps taken by someone else to build one.

Sure, you could probably look at the photos and read the descriptions and use your brain to fill in the missing details and build one yourself, but there would be additional work/calculations needed.

It's still a pretty frickin cool project though.

Re:Wind Power

[glenmark]

What are the implications or potential problems from removing energy from Earth's weather systems? Is the energy we're removing negligible enough to be ignored? Could it potentially change weather patterns by blocking/slowing wind?

It should have no more effect than a tree does, and in windy areas where wind power is a viable source (my old stomping grounds in West Texas spring to mind), having windbreaks is generally a good thing in terms of reducing erosion.

Of course, there has been a lot of chatter in the media lately about birds getting killed by windmill farms. Wildlife impact is a definite consideration in the design and placement of the things...

Re:Wind Power

[smooth wombat]

To help provide some insight into your questions you could start with this BBC link which talks about microclimates.

CNN has an article which talks about the same phenomenon.

This link has not only a discussion of microclimates but pictures and graphs to to illustrate the effect.

If you really want to numb your mind you could read this research paper which goes into a whole bunch of details relating to microclimates.

The above should get you started. I didn't provide the proverbial link to a Wiki article since there are enough of other sources to provide the same information.

Re:Ezz Empossible!!

[Ancient_Hacker]

Hmmm, still doesnt smell right... No mention of a wattmeter. A large magnetic gap. No closed magnetic path. No design equations. It's really hard to hit all the right sweet spots when winging it.

Plus it's really easy to be fooled when charging batteries-- the voltage may measure 48 volts, and the amps might measure 50, but that doesnt make 2400 watts. Batteries draw current only at the top of each cycle, so there's never that many amps and volts around at the same time. Your typical Radio-Shack meter is going to indicate hundreds of percent too hig-- a common stumbling-block for experimenters.

A true RMS-reading wattmeter is likely to show much less power. Sorry to be a spoil-sport.