Homebrew wind turbine

posted Jul 11th 2005 9:30am by Eliot Phillips
filed under: misc hacks

wind turbine

otherpower.com has a great write up on building and flying this 17 foot monster. The turbine features 25 pounds of magnets in the rotors and 16 pounds of copper wire in the stator. It’s a really interesting process going from bearing assembly, to coil mock-up, resin casting the rotors and stator, blade assembly and finally raising the tower. The result is a turbine that can stand up to winds over 60 mph and has been known to produce 3.8kW. It’s a good project and also fun to read because of all of the warnings about not severing your fingers with high powered magnets.

[thanks John Heylin]

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Comments [17]

Reader Comments

now that is cool!!

Posted at 10:35 am on Jul 11th, 2005 by Chris

Gret, nw h tlls m abot th mgnts…

Posted at 11:40 am on Jul 11th, 2005 by strider_mt2k

In all seriousness, that wind project is great!

Posted at 12:06 pm on Jul 11th, 2005 by strider_mt2k

alright this definatly makes up for those 2 already posted hacks day before last

Posted at 12:10 pm on Jul 11th, 2005 by Muhzark

otherpower is an awesome site, they have tons of really cool alternitive energy projects… some of the stuff is really easy to build and really cool.

Posted at 12:30 pm on Jul 11th, 2005 by henry herndon

that’s pretty funny, strider. Thanks for the laugh. :)

Posted at 1:44 pm on Jul 11th, 2005 by zen

Ooooh, i wonder if i could hook this up to pedals and use it to power a tv… with nintendo… and play kirby’s dreamland…

Posted at 2:03 pm on Jul 11th, 2005 by Steyr

wicked :), although no monday sipping makes me sad :(

Posted at 5:07 pm on Jul 11th, 2005 by Ed

I’ve been thinking about something like this for ages, just never been too bothered to look and now you have done it for me. So cheers, will 100% look into this but on a smaller scale for now (Neighbours really wouldnt like it).

Posted at 7:08 pm on Jul 11th, 2005 by Orbit

Great hack, I wonder what he makes in util sellback or if he even does.

Posted at 7:24 pm on Jul 11th, 2005 by Danp

Vertical-axis turbines are much simpler, and can harness the wind from any direction immediately.

Posted at 7:51 pm on Jul 11th, 2005 by Theblunderbuss

Link: http://www.awea.org/faq/vawt.html

Posted at 7:56 pm on Jul 11th, 2005 by theblunderbuss

vawt’s are pretty cool, and yes, pretty easy to build since they don’t spin as fast but they are not nearly as efficient as a standard issue horizontal axis unit.

after saying that, im thinking about building one myself.

Posted at 8:22 pm on Jul 11th, 2005 by henry herndon

MANUAL DE HUGH PIGGOTT EN CASTELLANO
Greetings, wind energy aficionados.
I know there are lots of people from Spanish speaking countries that log in sites like this one looking for information not available in Spanish.
From now on, the book “How to Build a Wind Turbine” by Hugh Piggott is available in Spanish at http://manual.bajatec.net

Posted at 12:50 pm on Mar 6th, 2006 by MIGUEL

If your after a quick job you should try some PVC blades and a small motor http://www.yourgreendream.com/diy_pvc_blades.php

http://www.thebackshed.com/Windmill/assemblyMini1.asp

Posted at 4:25 am on Jun 7th, 2006 by PVC windmill blades

those warnings are serious!

http://hackaday.com/2009/02/18/dirks-accident/

Posted at 4:45 pm on Feb 18th, 2009 by Ryan Leach

Neat post/ Will definitely visit again,

Posted at 11:37 pm on Jun 26th, 2009 by home made wind generators