How I built an electricity producing wind turbine

Step 7 The finished head of the wind turbine

This photo shows the finished head unit with the blades attached. Is that a thing of beauty or what? It almost looks like I know what I'm doing.

I never got a chance to properly test the unit before heading to Arizona. One windy day though, I did take the head outside and hold it high up in the air above my head into the wind just to see if the blades would spin it as well as I had hoped. Spin it they did. In a matter of a few seconds it spun up to a truly scary speed (no load on the generator), and I found myself holding onto a giant, spinning, whirligig of death, with no idea how to put it down without getting myself chopped to bits. Fortunately, I did eventually manage to turn it out of the wind and slow it down to a non-lethal speed. I won't make that mistake again.

Comments

[-max-]

what about water resistance?

[ARJOON]

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[mac11irl]

Im currently building my first turbine. Its only small, using as 30Watt motor from an old washing machine. i have also used some drain pipe for my blades, and housed the the unit snugly inside inside plastic piping. I have a major aerodynamic problem tho... everytime the wind blows, my turbine rotates so that it is faced out of the wind! i have attached 3 tail fins, and tried turning the blades around, but nothing seems to work! when i hold it into the wind, it will spin wonderfully, giving out about 15volts, but when left to its own it turns out. Any advice??? please ? btw, love your set up in this instructable!!

[truesprocket]

motor to far out , tail to close to pivet point , pivot loose & tilts heavy end down when the wind blows, you'r balance is off.

[bingo1912]

The Tail needs to be four times as long from the pivot point, as the front where the blade is to make sure that it keeps the blades into the wind. Flip it end for end and try it. If that doesn't work keep increasing.

[juanvi]

maybe the problem is that the part that holds the turbine with the tail is too small. Or maybe that the tail fins are small, look at the one used in this instructable, its pretty big, considering the size of the whole thing. I don't really know, but i'll think about it

[brunoruano]

it´s 90% chance of being because of the unbalance in weight... try, like in this project, adding a counterweight at the end by the tail!

[DzynGuy]

HaHaHaHa...That sounds like something I would have done! Wish I could have been there to see it.

[chevy79]

Nice rig you built there, looks like the blades are backwards. It will work, but much less efficiently. Turn them around and maybe you'll have enough power to run a bigger inverter to power up your GF's Hair Dryer.

[citrus]

hahahahaha. oh man... a friend and i made our own turbine to bring to Burning Man for that year's "The Green Man" theme, and we made the EXACT same mistake of holding it up to the wind in curiosity with no load. suffice to say we learned our lesson about holding onto very heavy objects with sharp bits that spin at high speeds :D

[cd41]

i wish you had taped that that would have made my day