Pelican Parts Forums - Build your own Windmill!

Saw this in slashdot's mysterious future and thought you guys would like it. I'm no damn dirty hippy, but I'd love to have my own power generating windmill.

http://www.otherpower.com/17page2.html
http://www.otherpower.com/images/dan...ying17foot.JPG

Quote:

So far the machine works quite well. It has such a huge swept area compared to our previous machines that it seems to start up in practically no wind, and it's making a little power by the time the anemometer says 5 mph. At 10 mph it's doing around 400 watts and at 16 mph it's up around 1.5KW. Above that I believe the blades are overpowered a bit by the alternator. I do see 2KW from it frequently and I've seen about 3800 watts from it a couple times in very high winds, but overall I believe the blades are held back a bit in higher winds by the alternator. I can improve it by adding a bit of resistance to the line - this would allow it to speed up in higher winds and the blades would run more efficiently - but as it is it seems very slow and peaceful, and it rarely goes over 200 rpm It's producing quite a bit more power than I can really use. So I'll leave it as it is, it's quite a good low wind machine I think. Time will tell how it holds together! It has been fun, the whole project took 3 weeks from start to finish, I had some friends and neighbors (all of which have their own homebrew wind turbines) helping along the way which was wonderful.