Don wrote in about our pedal-powered electricity piece, saying he liked it but "you look like you don't have a good home wind power guide on your page." He's right, we don't. He recommends Otherpower's Wind Power site. I'm an armchair tinkerer myself, but Otherpower ("The cutting edge of low technology") looks to be pretty much a DIY home power enthusiast's stomping ground:
Build your own! Building a wind generator from scratch is not THAT difficult of a project. You will need a shop with basic power and hand tools, and some degree of dedication. Large wind generators of 2000 Watts and up are a major project needing very strong construction, but smaller ones in the 1000 Watt, 8-11 foot range can be built fairly easily from scrapped car parts and be up and flying in a week! In fact, we highly recommend that you tackle a smaller wind turbine before even thinking about building a large one. You'll need to be able to cut and weld steel, and a metal lathe can be handy (though you could hire a machine shop that turns brake rotors do do some small steps for you).
Of course, I'm sure there are other good sites and resources out there: anyone care to recommend others?
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One of the issues that my organisation, the British Wind Energy Association, has found with the small wind area is the dearth of good information sites for the non-DIY market. This is indicative of the early stage this sector is at, in terms of being a mass consumer product. We get a lot of requests from people who want to put up small turbines, so we have put together a UK-centric page to help: http://www.bwea.com/small/index.html. Our cousins at the American Wind Energy Association also have a small wind info page (http://www.awea.org/smallwind.html) though it's a bit techie for those who just want to know where to get a turbine.
Posted by: Doctor Edge on 9 Apr 06
http://www.fieldlines.com/section/wind
Homebrewed Electricity/Wind
http://www.windpower.org/en/stat/units.htm
Wind Energy Reference Manual
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wind_power
Posted by: andreas buechel on 10 Apr 06
bwea url has a slight error, should be:
http://www.bwea.com/small/index.html
Posted by: John Kazer on 11 Apr 06
Actually, the correct BWEA url is
http://www.awea.org/smallwind.html .
Posted by: Mark Szpakowski on 11 Apr 06
Is there any market or manufacturer that sells wind power, that actually you can install on your home to generate wind power electricity for home use? Or who do you recommend to contact to find out about the present or future capability of this possibility?
Joe Tyler
Posted by: Joseph Tyler on 18 Apr 06
