We recommend using two different blade materials. You can use the one that fits your budget or the one that is most readily available.

First off, we recommend PVC plastic sewer pipe in the 8 to 12 inch range to make the blades. The great part about using this large sewer pipe is that it is usually available at large city construction sites for free. Simple ABS pipe works well too.

Look for pieces in the 4 to 5 foot range if possible. You will want to build a wind generator with blade diameter of around 8 feet if possible to produce the most power you can with your DC motor and you will need at least 4 feet long blades to do that.

The PVC sewer pipe, if you had to buy it, comes in 16 feet length and costs about $183 per section. Kind of expensive, so those pieces you have in your hands are very valuable.

Why use PVC?

We have tried many types of pipe, from ABS to thin wall PVC, but nothing seems to hold up like this green or blue sewer pipe does. It is thicker and stronger than other pipe and all it requires is a coat of UV (ultra violet) resistant paint to keep going for years.

One note of caution, if you use this kind of pipe you will not achieve the kind of efficiencies of design inherent in using wooden blades. The main reason for this is because the pipe is rounded. The wind does not flow nearly as well off of a rounded blade as it will from a flat wooden blade. You can, of course use ABS or the thinner PVC if it is available. Try to find free sources if you can.

You will have to paint those blades. The only drawback to using PVC sewer pipe, or any pipe for that matter, is that it was intended for use below ground or inside. Thus, you will need to paint the pipe sections of your blades with a tough UV resistant paint to combat the nasty effects of the sun over time. The PVC pipe will get brittle and crack over time. This can be a very dangerous situation when your wind generator is spinning at high RPM and little (or large) pieces of the blades start flying off. Be careful.

So, paint the blades with a UV inhibitor. The main ingredient in most of these paints is Titanium Dioxide. Just look for that in the can. Ask at your paint store or hardware store and tell them what you are painting, and what you are looking for. This is not a hard to find product, even though at first glance it may seem that is the case.

You can check the recommended ebook Build a Home Made Wind Generator

In our next post we will discuss how to cut the PVC blades. Stay tuned

This is a walk trough to build a blade for your home made wind generator.

Your choice of blade design and material greatly affects your home made wind generator’s overall efficiency and performance. Most modern factory produced wind energy blades feature a 3 blade design with very slender blades made from space age materials mostly. Three blades work best to avoid vibration.

Those slender blades catch every bit of wind energy coming by too. You would think that the blades would have to be large in order to do this. But the most important aspect of blade design is how big of a diameter they form.

You will need a blade with outside diameter, measured to the tips, of at least 8 feet in order to achieve about 1000 watts of power production. If you don’t feel comfortable with this big of a machine then scale it back accordingly. Read more…

A 3 blade design can capture up to 8 horsepower of energy while many of the old bladed design will have a hard time producing 2 horsepower! All those blades get in the way of the wind moving through the blades and actually slow down the spin. This is what we regard as turbine efficiency.

Thankfully, the new materials and new blade design are available for us to take advantage from. These modern designs feature a high tip- speed ratio.

What is Tip-Speed Ratio?

Simply put, this is a comparison between angular velocity of the tip of wind generator blade and the wind speed.

Tip-Speed Ratio = Tip Speed / Wind Speed

Most of the newer models available today have a tip speed ratio of between 5:1 and 8:1. That is really moving. In other words, modern blades can rotate faster at lower wind velocities. The larger the number, the better efficiency in capturing wind energy.

This compares to the old slow moving water pumping windmills that used to dot the landscape with a tip speed ratio of around 1:1.

The old style windmills were designed to pump water, and although less efficient, they provided higher torque (because of the large blade outside diameter) and better performance at low wind speeds which gave them a steadier pumping action (more water delivered) in low wind situations. They had to start pumping immediately so they had to catch the wind at the start very effectively.

Home made wind turbine

If you think of your wind generator blades as aircraft propellers you will gain a new appreciation for the intricate designs necessary to achieve this high overall efficiency at tip speeds that approach 125 miles per hour.

You do not need to replicate these technical advances to have an efficient machine. Just follow the simple directions for a smooth operating homemade wind generator.

Note that the most efficient aircraft propeller design is not the best design for a wind generator blade. The propeller is designed to move air, while the wind generator blade is designed to be moved by the air. Subtle differences exist which we will explain further.

To size a wind power renewable energy system, you first have to determine your energy budget.

In order to complete an energy budget you will need to know how much power typical appliances use. What follows is a chart to help you.

AC Appliances Typical Energy Usage in Watts

Toaster Oven 1500
VCR 35
Well Pump 800
Sewing Machine 87
Satellite TV 50
Refrigerator/freezer 460
Vacuum 1125
Circular Saw 1500
Hair Dryer 1500
Jigsaw 300
Computer 100
Laptop 60
Monitor 60
27” TV 200
DVD 14
Drill 800
Microwave oven 1245
Compact fluorescent 13
Battery Charger 25
Blender/mixer 350
Belt Sander 800
DC Appliance Energy Usage
Appliance Watts
Cell Phone 4
Motor (small) 65
Sunfrost refrigerator 13
Radio 15
Stereo 30
Water Pump 50
VCR 15
14” Color TV 75
Battery Charger 7
Inverter Standby 5
Halogen Light 20

Now that you know how much energy your appliances use you can figure out your total energy usage per week, and per month.

In order to do this, simply figure out how many hours each device is used each day. Multiply this number by the number of watts that device uses and you will come up with the watt-hours of usage. Add all of the totals together to come up with your total watt-hours of usage for the week, and for the month.

Keep these numbers with your notes; you will use them to design your charging capacity, battery bank and inverter sizing.

Figuring out your own energy usage

Take the numbers you got from your own appliances or use the numbers we provided and work out your own energy budget.

Example:

Add as many items as it takes to complete your inventory. It should be noted that most households use approximately 20 Kilowatt hours per day on average.

Your new wind-powered renewable energy system would have to be very large to compensate for this high level of usage. A typical home made wind generator is only going to produce about 1 Kilowatt (1000 watts) of power. This is a wind turbine with blades 4 feet long, making a blade outside diameter of 8 feet.

Through conservation and buying newer more energy efficient appliances you can achieve the goal of living off the grid. It just takes some time and effort on your part. You can live on a total family usage of about 2 or 3 Kilowatt-hour per day and live a relatively normal life, with satellite TV, satellite internet, DVD’s, lights etc. It can be done.

Some questions answered

Once I know how much power I will need to run my home, how will I figure out how much power production I need?

Answer: You figured out how much power you use in the earlier exercise. You should be aiming for around 10 kilowatt hours per day. You could actually run your entire home on just under 3 kilowatt hours per day with energy conservation measures

The power formula goes like this:

System Power = (Wind Speed ^3) (Blade Diameter ^2) x .00478

Wind Speed is measured in miles per hour.

Blade Diameter is measured in feet.

Power is measured in Watts

It is easy to figure out your blade diameter. A widely used 8 foot blade diameter has been proved with great success.

To find your wind speed you will have to find a wind speed chart, or monitor your own wind speed for a while to obtain your own readings.

Here is a source of wind speed data.

World Wind Speed Data Maps

Let’s say your average wind speed is about 12 mph, which is pretty good. Plug that into your formula too. It would look something like this:

System Power = (12^3) (8^2) x .00478 = (1728) (64 ) x .00478
= 110592 x .00478 = 528 watts

Multiply this by 24 hours and you will have 12672 watt-hours, or about 1.2 kilowatt hours per day.

Wind speed has the greatest impact on power output since it is cubed in the previous formula. You can’t change wind speed though. You either have it or you don’t.

This brings up our next question.

Should I build one large wind generator, or several small ones?

Answer: Obviously blade diameter can have a huge impact on the amount of power that your homemade wind generator produces. There are a few concerns though. Yes, you could put up a homemade wind generator with a 20 foot blade diameter, but the forces of the wind at storm levels would demand a very substantial tower. Also, if you live in a populated area your neighbor might not appreciate a huge wind generator in your backyard. Ask first.

Some areas even have bylaws about this stuff, do some research first and find out what you can and cannot do.

Usually it is much easier to find towers for several smaller wind generators and parts to build them too. If you have areas on your property that are clear in different directions, put up several homemade wind generators to capture the wind more effectively from different directions with much smaller towers.

One final thing, when you have several homemade wind generators you can shut one down for cleaning or maintenance (or if a storm does this for you) and your other ones are still providing power.

A lot less work in the long run, and less headaches with a smaller system.

Get the full scoop on How to Build Your Own Home Made Wind Generator

Although it is much less expensive to initially get hooked into the local electric company’s grid than it is to set up and hook into wind turbines, in the long run one saves money by utilizing the wind for home’s energy needs—while also becoming more independent.

Not receiving an electric bill while enjoying the advantages of the modern electrically-driven lifestyle is a wondrous feeling.

Electric bills and fuel bills are rising steadily—but the cost of running a wind turbine energy is zero, and the cost of installing and hooking up a turbine is steadily coming down as demand rises and more commercial success is realized by various companies producing the turbines and researching technologies to make them ever more efficient.

In addition, people are moving away from the traditional electric grids and the fossil fuels for personal reasons including desire for greater independence, the desire to live remotely or rurally without having to “go primitive”, political concerns such as fears of terrorist strikes on oil fields or power grids, or concerns about the environment.

Again, this motivation to get away from the traditional energy sources is the same one that causes people to seek the power of the wind for their home energy, giving more business opportunities to profit from wind turbine production and maintenance, which drives their costs down for the consumers.

In nearly thirty states at the time of this writing, homeowners who remain on the grid but who still choose to use wind energy (or other alternative forms) are eligible for rebates or tax breaks from the state governments that end up paying for as much as 50% of their total “green” energy systems’ costs.

In addition, there are 35 states at the time of this writing where these homeowners are allowed to sell their excess energy back to the power company under what are called “net metering laws”. The rates that they are being paid by the local power companies for this energy are standard retail rate. In other words, the homeowners are actually profiting from their own energy production.

Some federal lawmakers are pushing to get the federal government to mandate these tax breaks and other wind power incentives in all 50 states. Japan and Germany already have national incentive programs in place. However, “A lot of this is handled regionally by state law. There wouldn’t really be a role for the federal government,” as Craig Stevens from Energy Department says.

And, as might be imagined, there are power companies who feel that it’s unfair that they should have to pay retail rates to private individuals. “We should [only have to] pay you the wholesale rate for … your electricity,” according to Bruce Bowen, Pacific Gas & Electric’s director of regulatory policy. However, the companies seem to be more worried about losing short term profits than about the benefits, especially in the long run, of the increased use of wind turbines or wind farms.

Did you know that you can build your own wind generator for your home energy demand? Learn how. Click on the image:

Build a wind generator for the home