Hi we are a team of Maker Educators from MakerBay in Hong Kong. We prepare a wind turbine building workshop for a group of grade 5 kids. Here are our experiment and lessons learnt.

Project Goal:

- Building a small wind turbine that can generate electricity to power up a LED or other possible loads.

Step 1: Design Sketch

Step 2: Materials and Tools

Hardware Store Parts

PVC pipe

Special Parts

Motor (RK-520TB-17410) - Ap Liu Street 豐盛數碼科技有限公司

LEDs (min. voltage to light up: Red-1.5V, Green-1.7V, Blue-1.8, white-2.2V)

Crocodile clip wires

Tools and Extra Materials Needed

Hobby knife/ Scissors

Hot glue gun

Ruler

Multimeter

A fan/ wind source

Step 3: Some Tips in Finding a Right Motor

Basically, you need a motor that can generate measurable voltage (e.g. at least 1.5V) at low RPMs.

1. bring a multimeter and LED with you to the shop

2. connect LED to the motor and spin the motor shaft with your hands to see whether it can light up the LED.

3. If yes, congratulation! you probably find the right motor.

** If you want to learn more**

Windynation also has more useful information and background knowledge (E.g. type of motors, voltage-rpm ratio, magnet etc.) in choosing the right motor.

Step 4: Making the Blades

For blades, we just keep it simple. Since we consider the safety and ease of handling materials for kids. We decided to use cardboard/ card paper to make the blades.

1. Cut out four 15cm long and 3.5 wide card paper as the blades.

2. Fold it.

3. Stick them together with hot glue gun.

4. Fix blades on motor shaft with hot glue gun.

** Some tips in blade designs **

Using lighter materials (such as cardboard, card paper) can spin faster.
If the turbine does not spin fast enough, you can increase the speed by adding the number of blades.
Based on our experiments, we found that the ratio of blade diameter to motor diameter is around 12:1