Thursday, October 1, 2009

How To Start With Residential Wind Power

By David Sullivan

Looking to reduce your power bill or start living without buying power from the power company? A great way to do it is to invest in residential wind power.

So why don't you and your neighbors go out and buy some turbines? Because commercial ones can retail for exorbitant prices - $2000 to $6000, even. They are still worth the money because they last for a long time and in a year or two they have paid for themselves, but there is an alternative.

If you have the right plans you can build your own, in fact. And it's not complicated, and it's not expensive. you can do it for around $150-$300 depending on the amount of power you want to produce.

What will you need to make your own residential wind power?

You will need a set of well engineered plans, a work area, simple tools and four to six days.

The components of a wind generator:

Four main parts in a generator are the blades and hub, the body with a DC motor, the tail and the tower. The blades will be the toughest part to build of the whole machine. They are still fairly easy with a good guide to move you along.

The motor converts the rotation of the blades to electricity. It is the most expensive part. Your manual will tell you how to install it best and what size you'll need and all the other technical details about this part.

For the body it is best to use double walled stainless steel like that from a chimney pipe or wood stove. It is very cheap and easy to get and will last a long time.

The tail is very simple but usually essential to make sure your turbine is pointed in the right direction. Make it sturdy so it can withstand storm winds.

You can buy or build your own tower. The best thing to do is find an old TV tower and recycle it for you wind generator tower. Many people will even pay you to take them down and get them out of their way.

Now that you know some of the basics, you can see that it's not that complicated or expensive to have your own residential wind power system to run your household. All you need now are the plans to get started.

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