Great news that you are looking at building your own wind turbine. It is a very rewarding experience as you not only get to help the environment but you can save on your electricity bill.
Firstly the picture that your displaying is a 5 blade wind turbine, this is not the most efficient horizontal axis wind turbine. The optimal horizontal wind turbine uses 3 blades as it provides the greatest amount of efficiency.
Well I hve decided to use 4 Savonius turbines. 2 that start up in 4mph winds and are 6ft tall with small blade and low rpm. The other 2 are 3ft tall with higher rpm. This is all mounted on a 35ft 2" PVC pole. Does anyone have any other thoughts for this?
P.S. I call this idea for an istructable when I build it.
My hopes are to power a house. But I have figured out that 500GPH 12v bilge pumps are perfect generators after you remove the bottoms. I have about 5 so I'm going to put a lot of small turbines that add up.
An ideas?
I built a little one, out of half a Pringles tube and a pair of CDs, with an anonymous lump out of an old video recorder as the bearing. It was unbalanced, wonky, and the cardboard vanes had no waterproofing, but it spun merrily in a tree in our garden until a >40mph rainstorm hit.
ry25920
You need to decide what you want your turbine to do - spin prettily, generate electricity or do mechanical work? When you know what you want to do, and how much you want it to do (do you want to light an LED, or a whole street?), then you can decide of size and design.
I built a medium sized one in 7th grade out of PVC pipe. It was pretty cool! I got the plans from make magazine vol 5 and then posted the pictures in the make filickr pool. It cost around $100 to build. Not bad. Here;s the link
Discussions
11 years ago
Great news that you are looking at building your own wind turbine. It is a very rewarding experience as you not only get to help the environment but you can save on your electricity bill.
Firstly the picture that your displaying is a 5 blade wind turbine, this is not the most efficient horizontal axis wind turbine. The optimal horizontal wind turbine uses 3 blades as it provides the greatest amount of efficiency.
I have compiled a list of Do It Yourself Wind Turbines that may help you better understand wind turbine design.
12 years ago
Well I hve decided to use 4 Savonius turbines. 2 that start up in 4mph winds and are 6ft tall with small blade and low rpm. The other 2 are 3ft tall with higher rpm. This is all mounted on a 35ft 2" PVC pole. Does anyone have any other thoughts for this? P.S. I call this idea for an istructable when I build it.
12 years ago
Do you understand how turbines work? that's the first step.
Reply 12 years ago
Well I do understand how they work, but I'm trying to do is make at least 500 watts.
12 years ago
Does anyone have an idea on how to connect 30+ 12v generators together?
12 years ago
My hopes are to power a house. But I have figured out that 500GPH 12v bilge pumps are perfect generators after you remove the bottoms. I have about 5 so I'm going to put a lot of small turbines that add up. An ideas?
12 years ago
I want to build a larger version of this type with oil barrels.
Reply 12 years ago
a savorous windmill? I spelled that wrong and I know I did
Reply 12 years ago
Savonius.
I did a quick google for "savonius", and look what was fourth on the list.
I built a little one, out of half a Pringles tube and a pair of CDs, with an anonymous lump out of an old video recorder as the bearing. It was unbalanced, wonky, and the cardboard vanes had no waterproofing, but it spun merrily in a tree in our garden until a >40mph rainstorm hit.
ry25920
You need to decide what you want your turbine to do - spin prettily, generate electricity or do mechanical work? When you know what you want to do, and how much you want it to do (do you want to light an LED, or a whole street?), then you can decide of size and design.
Reply 12 years ago
Typical internet example: http://www.angelfire.com/ak5/energy21/microsavonius.htm
12 years ago
I built a medium sized one in 7th grade out of PVC pipe. It was pretty cool! I got the plans from make magazine vol 5 and then posted the pictures in the make filickr pool. It cost around $100 to build. Not bad.
Here;s the link
12 years ago
wanna try and build a wind belt? ten times more effiecient, tons cheaper.