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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."
I'll take 2 please, mounted side by side, in opposite directions, my current window fan just isn't cuttin the mustard...
Don't anthropomorphize computers: they hate that.
I think if you replace the term windtunnel with windmill the answer will become clear.
That or if you bothered to read the article.
I read the internet for the articles.
DIY stories so far today:
Homebuilt 19" Mini-ITX Server Rack
The Floating Powerbook
A Practical Guide to DIY LCD Projectors
How to Build a 17-ft Wind Turbine
And it's only 2:45pm EST.
Did Bob Vila donate a large sum of money to Slashdot or something?
____
~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey
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.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
It's obviously for your dog! Now you can simulate the head-out-the-window-of-your-car experience right in your very own studio apartment.
Hey, all I want to know is how many birds it'll kill...we have a real starling problem where I live.
[RIAA] says its concern is artists. That's true, in just the sense that a cattle rancher is concerned about its cattle.
I like some of the sites they link to. Some useful stuff. Like how to make a rocket out of a match.
http://www.matchrockets.com/
Before internet, I once payed $2 out of the back of a comic book to learn that.
I've been looking for something like this. Now I just need a death ray to use on my homeowner's association and I'll be good to go.
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
he runs off the grid in Vermont, with a battery-power system, some solar cells, and a river paddlewheel turbine, and has a ridge on his 42 acre property that he could site this on.
Which is why he uses a laptop instead of a PC - easier to wire it to trickle feed from the battery system.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
... to power their websites.
slashdot effect in... er... effect.
John Maynard Keynes: "When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do?"
Wired had an article this month about rooftop solar power that was kinda cool. I thought that the project they highlighted (no pun intended) could be DIY with a little money and time.
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
this kinda reminds me of a guy made a small powerplant for his stream... He actually got money back from the powercompany as he was now supplying instead of drawing power :) hellacool... I wonder if this will be the same case?
Bad link in the article text. It's here.
This is my post. There are many others like it. If you don't like what you read here, go try one of the others.
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.
May the threads progress competently.
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.
I've never really gotten an answer to this question:
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?
Do we have any information about changes in weather from other man-made things such as cities? I've heard beltways can cause enough heat to slow/redirect some weather. (I know that birds of prey use updrafts caused by hot highways to help them gain altitude using less energy)
Any reliable sources for this kind of information, or are all sides biased?
~D
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
Just when we thought they had run out of insane cooling techniques, they tell us how to build a 17ft wind turbine. It wont just cool your computer, it will blow it down the street too!
I'm pretty sure most towns won't let you construct a 17 foot windmill in your yard. There are a lot of ordinances where I live, and I see this as being against at least several of them.
Also, don't windmills produce tons of noise, to the point where they actually are a cause of noise pollution? That ought to make your neighbors thrilled.
/. ++
Here
I keep telling myself I need to learn how to weld. I really do
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
Google, text only:w ww.otherpower.com/17page1.html+&hl=en&lr=&strip=1
& safe=off&c2coff=1&q=flying17foot.JPG&btnG=Search
& safe=off&c2coff=1&q=site%3Awww.otherpower.com+turb ine&btnG=Search
http://72.14.207.104/search?q=cache:hHhkzdBOglAJ:
Google, image of turbine:
http://images.google.ca/images?svnum=10&hl=en&lr=
Google, images of turbines on their site:
http://images.google.ca/images?svnum=10&hl=en&lr=
carmaHore.
Nice, but I need plans for an 18-ft turbine.
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.
/. ++
The only wattage mentioned is "36 watts" from turning it by hand, and using not a WATTMETER, but a voltmeter. Voltmeters are notoriously inaccurate at measuring "wattage", especally of weird waveforms you're likely to get from a homebrew generator. Also if thye were turning it by hand as hard as they could, the output should have been around 250 watts, assuming an average efficiency generator. So if we use these figures, it looks like their homebrew generator is only about 12% efficient.
This is not a great example of good DIY-ing.
Roof Shingle power sources. There are now a number of suppliers.
r 17.html
http://www.kingsolar.com/catalog/mfg/uni-solar/sh
Uni-Solar shingles are unique and have been honored with thePopular Science Grand Award, " Best of what's new (Environmental Technology)," and Discover magazine's "Technological Innovation Award" for best innovation (Environment).
The PV shingle permits roofs of commercial and residential buildings to evolve from mere protection from the weather to a source of electric power. The flexible, thin-film solar cell shingle blends into roofing pattern of traditional asphalt shingles or roof tile.
In the alternative energy crowd it's actually very popular to build one's own wind turbine instead of purchasing one pre-built. There are kits available, but some design them from scratch.
Often it's rather sobering looking at a wind speed map that your region isn't quite windy enough to make a turbine pay for itself. One needs Class 4 speeds at a minimum, and then you've got to deal with city ordinances about various crap with building a large structure.
I've been doing 3 phase permanent magnet motor controllers for many years now, and I find the amount of magnetic material in the OtherPower alternators to absolutely insane. OTOH, I think they do it that way for simplicity of construction and to get zero cogging torque. i.e. They could use only 1 ring of magnets and use metal coil forms on a steel plate. The problem then is that the magnetic poles tend to "stick" to the metal ones and you get what's known as cogging torque - you can feel these sticky spots as you turn the motor. They also use an absolutely huge air gap (the full thickness of the coils) which leads to flux going between poles instead of throught the coils - another source of inefficiency. OTOH, they sell magnets to people wanting to replicate what they've done ;-)
Hamster power is where the real future is!
My landlord had a stroke when i installed a dish, i imagine he'll implode with that 17 feet fan.
If you had read the article more carefully, you would have noticed:
:P
So far the machine works quite well. It has such a huge swept area compared to our previous machines that it seems to start up in practically no wind, and it's making a little power by the time the anemometer says 5 mph. At 10 mph it's doing around 400 watts and at 16 mph it's up around 1.5KW. Above that I believe the blades are overpowered a bit by the alternator. I do see 2KW from it frequently and I've seen about 3800 watts from it a couple times in very high winds, but overall I believe the blades are held back a bit in higher winds by the alternator. I can improve it by adding a bit of resistance to the line - this would allow it to speed up in higher winds and the blades would run more efficiently - but as it is it seems very slow and peaceful, and it rarely goes over 200 rpm It's producing quite a bit more power than I can really use. So I'll leave it as it is, it's quite a good low wind machine I think.
Around where I live, that'd make about 600 watts or so on average. Not bad, really. Too bad they didn't provide detailed schematics or cost estimates
"/etc/rc.d/rc.sysinit is a gimp plugin and must be run by the gimp in order to be used."
That's why my turbine has solid, plastic shields on the front and back.
It generates far less energy than expected, so I'm in the process of building several more.
...debunked here [PDF] among other places.
Other recent research supports the idea that birds can see wind turbines perfectly well and mostly tend to keep their distance. There are a few kills, but the turbines aren't the bird-blenders they've been made out to be.
What kind of cat or dog would be good for deflecting bird chunks dropping from the sky, and isn't it going to be heavier to carry above your head anyways? I really think the umbrella is better suited to the task.