Are you thinking about finally going green and powering your house completely with wind power? If so, you’re not alone – more people than ever before are looking to wind power to meet their energy needs and go off the grid.
You have a couple options if you want to use wind power to eliminate your electric bill: the easiest and least time-consuming is to simply buy an existing wind turbine (called a “prefabricated wind turbine”).
A wind turbine with enough output to fully power your house can cost anywhere from $5,000 to $20,000 – for most households, that means that your investment will pay for itself within 10-15 years, assuming average utility bill expenses.
That’s an “ok” investment, but if you really want to see a high return on your money and don’t mind getting your hands dirty, the best option with personal wind power is to build your own wind turbine.
If you do it correctly, you can achieve the same results as a manufactured wind turbine, all for much less than $5,000 – in some cases, it may only cost you $200.
Here’s what you’ll need to make your own wind turbine and start using personal wind power to meet all your energy needs:
- DC Power Motor
- Sheets of metal (to assemble the body and tail)
- ABS or PVC pipe (to construct your wind turbine blades)
- Hub (to connect your blades to the motor)
- Tower (to hold up your blades)
- Deep-Cycle Battery (to store your energy)
- Charge Controller (to prevent the battery from overloading)
- Dump load (to send extra power to)
- AC Inverter (if you need to use AC power)
- Nuts and bolts (for connecting the blades to the hub and other pieces)
- Tools: socket set, screwdrivers, a grinder, a jigsaw, and sandpaper
As you can see, building your own wind turbine is a bit more complicated than creating your own solar panels – it is a more complex device, so more mechanical know-how and assembly are required.
The good news is that even a DIY wind turbine can produce far more power than a solar panel – properly constructed and with sufficient wind, your own windmill might produce anywhere from 300 – 500 Watts of power. So you won’t need too many of them to completely power your house, or at least significantly cut your electric bill!
However, be careful before making your own wind turbines – unless you have enough wind in your area, they will be completely useless! As a general rule of thumb, you want the average wind speed near your house to be at least 10 mph or a wind turbine won’t do much good. Mountains, plains, and anything near the ocean are therefore much better locations for a wind turbine than lower elevations with a lot of tree cover.
If you really don’t have enough wind to properly use personal wind power, then you may want to consider creating solar panels instead to go off the grid!
