Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

How to Build a 17-ft Wind Turbine

Posted by timothy on from the perfect-for-annoying-neighborhood-pets dept.

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."

5 of 335 comments (clear)

  1. Slashdot is brought to you by Sears Craftsman by TripMaster+Monkey · · Score: 5, Funny

    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

  2. Links by dwight0 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  3. Otherpower.com Rules! by Coocha · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.
  4. Ezz Empossible!! by Ancient_Hacker · · Score: 5, Interesting
    making your own generator with magnets and wire is just plain crazy. Designing and building an efficient generator is WAY beyond anybody's homebrew ability. You need to know electromagnetics, have a source of silicon steel laminations, the ability to stamp them out to 0.010" precision, the ability to wind interleaved 6-phase coils, and much more.


    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.

  5. Re:Not exactly friendly by evilpenguin · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't know about your part of the world, but the limits in my county are that the tower must be short enough that if it fell it would land inside your property lines. I have 2 acres, the narrow part of which is about 350 ft. so I can have (in theory) a 125 ft. tower (although IIRC the FAA gets to intervene above a certain height -- you know -- the red "don't fly into me lights").

    As for noise, I don't know about this homebrew thing, but there is a commercial windmill about 10 miles from my house in minnesota. It is 250 ft high with a rotor span of 150 ft. It produces an annual average of 1.2 million kWhr (enough to power about 200 average homes). You can drive right up to it, which I did the other day. I had to turn of my radio and my carn engine to hear it AT ALL. It made a soft "whoof whoof" sound that was audible when I was right underneath it, but could not be heard from 1 block away.