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:Otherpower.com Rules!

[Anonymous Coward]

"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..."

Ah, irony.

Re:The Problem With Small Wind Turbines is this:

[Nytewynd]

How many birds would be saved by replacing coal burning powerplants with wind turbines?

Most of them. In 100 years when greenhouse gasses kill everything, birds will wish they had windmills.

Re:Wind Power

[ArsonSmith]

Even if you had a giant wind turbine that was 1/4 mile high and across your still using less than 1% of the total wind power available at that point vertically in the atmosphere.

If they start making large fields of 1000+ foot hight turbines I might start worring about the environmental effects. For now a small forest I'm sure has far much more effect on wind resistance than a field of turbines.

Re:Wind Power

[glenmark]

Huh? I think there's a big difference between an inert blob that the air mostly just flows around (with some turbulence and loss of energy), and a windmill carefully impedance matched to the wind to extract the maximum possible energy from it.

I think you may be underestimating how much energy transfer takes place when wind strikes a tree. Of course it will vary wildly depending upon the species of tree, as well as its size and age, but it takes quite a bit of energy to get all of those branches swaying. Just try pushing a large branch around on a calm day and keep it going. See how long it takes you to get tired. Then extrapolate that effort to all of the branches on the tree...

Also, it's not at all clear to me that changing weather patterns is a good thing globally just because it helps locally.

I don't disagree. Predicting the impact of manmade structures is a non-trivial feat. Just take a look at the plethora of journal articles studying the impact of suburban sprawl on temperatures with its huge expanses of concrete and asphalt. I'm simply arguing that the impact of a windmill on wind patterns would be no greater than that of a tree. In fact, I would expect that trees should have a greater impact due to the cooling effects they provice.

Of course, these are all simply educated guesses on my part, as I am not a climate researcher (my science background is primarily in solid state physics). I could easily be mistaken.