I know, it sounds incredible. How could you build your own residential wind turbines for less than $200 each? Well, the reality is that you could do it even cheaper! And it didn’t require any special skills or knowledge.
If you want to skip the story and see the website I got the wind turbine plans from, you can click here, but I recommend reading through the entire story!
I’m getting ahead of myself though. We were talking about the farmer I met at the diner. When I got over to his house for a visit, he showed me his test installation.
I admit, it looked a little rinky-dink. But after he explained that he only used this to test the power generation he gets out of each new wind turbine it made alot more sense. It was supposed to be something easy to take down!
Here’s a snapshot of his testing grounds. I thought the up-side-down rubbermaid tote as a testing station was particularly amusing.
We discussed the building process a bit, and it turns out that most of the materials you need for a diy wind turbine are things that you probably have lying around the garage or worst case are a drive to the hardware store away. The construction time was pretty minimal compared to the return you get.
Now I should say that it was pretty clear from the test readings that you aren’t going to power your entire house off of one of these turbines. But they’re not designed to do that. These need to be installed like a bank of solar panels and be connected to a battery bank to store the power.
It’s really no different from any other green power installation. Since the wind comes and goes you can’t just plug an extension cord to the turbine and expect to get limitless power.
That said this farmer had a couple banks of solar panels and four residential wind turbines that he built himself and he was able to supply his entire house with it. Good enough for me! At less than $200 a pop it’s still a fraction of what you’d pay for commercial turbines with similar output.
Anyhow, I was inspired and went home to build my own. I bought the plans that the farmer had followed and was thrilled to see detailed step by step directions with pictures and instructional videos. There was even a set of plans for diy solar panels and I made a mental note to try those out too.
Click here to check out the DIY wind turbine plans I used.
This looked pretty easy. I gathered up everything I’d need to make my first wind turbine and went for it! Here’s a snapshot of the blade assembly.
It was as easy as it looked. I managed to spend half a day making a nice wind turbine that generated about 250W, which is more than twice what your average commercial solar panel will do. Fantastic!
Well, I made a few more of these and am now thrilled with the amount of power we have. I even tried building a few solar panels using the included plans and those worked out great as well. Here’s a picture of our farmhouse. If you look carefully you can see the solar panels on the roof, and of course you can see the wind turbine up front.
Click here to go to the official website for the wind turbine plans I used to build my own wind turbines for less than $200 each.
If someone had told me a few months ago that finding the best residential wind turbines would be this hard I would have thought they were crazy. My experience in the commercial construction industry was the opposite! But let’s face it, in the commercial space, there’s lots of high end stuff available. But those generally aren’t micro wind turbines useful for homes, and if they can be adapted, they’re ridiculously expensive.
So what now? I was on a pretty tight time line. I had to be done with my search and at least close to having a residential wind power system installed by the time the house was done or we wouldn’t have enough power. The farm house was off grid and didn’t have any other power available. It seemed to me that using diesel generators was pretty much defeating the purpose of having green power, right?
And not going green was out of the question. Residential solar energy would get us part of the way but we really needed to find some good home wind turbines to really cover our power needs. And quick!
What about used? We tried looking for wind turbines for sale, and found lots of high end brand new stuff. Occasionally we’d find a used wind turbine available but most of the time they were useful for commercial purposes and just weren’t all that great for residential power solutions.
Just in time, I was talking to a local farmer at the diner and he started telling me about this wind turbine design he had, and how he ended up building his own residential wind turbines for his farm. And it worked great! He invited me out to his place to take a look, and we made an appointment for me to see it the next day. I went home and my wife was thrilled to hear about our conversation!
Click here to read the rest of the story about residential wind turbines
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Click here to skip the rest of the story and just go see the DIY Wind Turbine Plans that saved me THOUSANDS!
Hey there, my name is Jason. I’m a semi-retired construction project engineer, and I have a passion for alternate energy sources. When my wife and I rebuilt an old farmhouse on some property we bought we agreed that we had to have some residential wind turbines to help power the place.
I’ve done some solar work on commercial buildings before, and have even installed a few vertical wind turbines as well, but I haven’t done any small scale wind power systems before. I couldn’t wait to get started on my new challenge!
First things first though, we needed to rebuild this house. It was a bit ramshackle and out dated and we decided to just tear it down. We definitely wanted to maintain the look and feel of an older home, and recycling the building material was a perfect fit. We hired a crew to carefully dismantle most of the shell and some of the interior so we could rebuild much of the place with fully recycled materials.
While that was underway I started my research into alternate energy sources that were suitable for residential use. Everybody knows all about solar panels and using those was pretty straight forward, but we didn’t get enough sun for residential solar panels to be more than a part of our overall energy strategy. Some sort of home wind turbine, also called micro wind turbines, was definitely called for.
I looked all over the place, researched wind turbine technology, talked to local contractors, and searched the web. I just couldn’t find the right residential wind turbines for our new home. I was at a loss. Having a home wind turbine was non negotiable, I just needed to find the right one. Preferably before the house was done being rebuilt!
Click here to read the rest of the story about residential wind turbines
Or
Click here to skip the rest of the story and just go see the DIY Wind Turbine Plans that saved me THOUSANDS!
