Wind Generator

With the current green shift that’s going on in our society you’d think that the price of wind generators and solar panels would decrease. That however has not been the case. Wind generators are still way too expensive for the average person to buy and install. When we were first starting out with renewable energy we were floored at how expensive everything is. That’s why we decided to build homemade wind generators.

Building homemade wind generators is quite a bit cheaper than buying one. We’ve gotten the price to build one down below $150 by finding free sources for the most expensive part– the tower. I’m getting ahead of myself though… let’s look at what you’ll need to do to build your homemade wind generator.

There are 3 basic parts to a wind generator: the body, blades/hub, and tower. Each of these 3 parts are fairly easy to build and can be built using low cost materials from your local hardware store.

The body of a wind generator is what ties the whole thing together. It houses the motor which the blades are attached to. The tail is also hooked onto the body opposite the motor. There is a flange which is also hooked onto the bottom of the body to allow it to be mounted onto the tower. The body can be made from leftover PVC pipe that is used to build your blades. The whole purpose for the body is to tie everything together and to make sure that no water gets into the motor.

The blades are probably the most difficult thing to make for your homemade wind generator. They aren’t really that hard to make, but the hardest part of the project. For this you’ll need some 6″ – 8″ PVC pipe. The pipe is cut into a blade shape. It’s the most inexpensive way that we have found to make blades. They work very well, and look quite nice when painted. You actually will need to paint the blades because PVC gets brittle when exposed to sunlight. I usually paint the blades with two coats of tremclad paint. I use tremclad because it has UV protective particles in it. All that’s left now is to connect the blades to the hub. We used an old pulley as it was easy to mount onto the shaft of the motor. Simply drill a couple holes in the blades and hub and use some bolts to connect it all together.

The tower is usually the most expensive part of any wind generator installation, but we found a way to get it for free. I was helping a friend re-shingle his house and didn’t want to walk all the way to the other side of the roof to get down the ladder. I decided to climb down the old TV tower that he still had hooked up to the side of his house… than it hit me! I could use an old TV tower to get my wind generator up in the air! I asked him if I could have it because he had already switched to satellite a couple years before. He said no problem. You can find a tower for your wind generator just by driving around your local neighborhood and looking for anyone with a TV tower and satellite dish on a house. Ask them and they’ll be glad you’re getting rid of what they think of as an eyesore.

That’s pretty much it. Homemade wind generators really aren’t very complicated machines… you just need to break it down into smaller more manageable steps. It is possible to build one for thousands less than buying one and I highly recommend that you try it yourself… you’ll be surprised at how much money you’ll save.

Andrew Oke is very interested in renewable energy. He has 16 years experience living off the grid, and has completely built his own renewable energy system. If you want to learn more information about homemade wind generators just click the previous link. There is also more information about homemade wind generators you can check out at the previous link as well.

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