On a blustery day, probably in March years ago, I stood outside and thought to myself, “Gee, wouldn’t wind power be great!” So began the my learning adventure with wind power. Keeping it real, means that when it works you hear about it, and when it doesn’t you also hear about it. Unfortunately, phase one of our wind project didn’t pan out well
Wind Generator
Our first wind turbine was a used Air 400 W unit from AZ wind and sun, and I believe we got it in late 2000 or early 2001. There are many units on the market that are almost exactly same. Here you will find a link to one on Amazon: 400-Watt Wind Generator
First Location
I had this great idea on how to quickly mount this unit and get some of that free wind power charging my batteries. The turbine was mounted on the top of a ten foot section of 2 inch electrical conduit. A couple of U clamps and Volia! It was mounted on the deck to the side of the house.
Mounted, charging, and done for the moment. There were many other construction projects taking place at that time. I watched the tri-metric charging meter, and saw several Amps charging on a breezy day. All was fine, until late one night.
Waaannntt! Waanntt! I woke up abruptly to what sounded like a large air-horn from a TRAIN!
A wind storm was blowing through our area and this was the first time we ever heard the “over speed” protection from the flexible turbine blades. Jackie said she could feel the floor vibrating from this loud machine fastened to a wooden sound box, our house! Needless to say, I had to re-engineer the turbine mounting arrangement.
Second Location
We suffered a couple more “Train Visits” in our home, until I had a chance to do something different. This time, I mounted it on a 13-14′ pipe that was clamped to one of the 4×4 poles that was part of our solar array mount. The advantage of this second location was the heavy DC cable from the solar array could be used for wind as well. The second pole was approximately where I’m standing in from of the truck, in the picture above.
This location seemed to work better. The location is still too close to obstructions, and was way too low. One day I got curious about the wind contribution to my power. I sat down and took notes for a few hours while the wind was gusty and strong. The turbine would hit over speed occasionally during this time. Some times I’d get 25A at 12V! But that would last for 30 seconds, followed by minutes of 2-4A charging. All in all, the conclusion was that the 400W turbine was averaging the same as a 50W solar panel might on a sunny day! This formed my choice to continue investing in solar at that time.
Lessons Learned
I am by far, not a wind turbine expert but I can make a few suggestions that you can benefit from. We would like to move into our second generation wind project next year. Here’s the tips:
- Mount turbines HIGH and away from any buildings or obstructions. 30 Feet higher than surrounding obstructions. In my initial experience, little wind eddies would keep the machine from staying in the strong wind. Frequently it would steer out of the wind for no good reason.
- Never mount a wind machine against a building!!
- Avoid any wind turbine that uses “Flexible Blades” to keep the unit from rotating too fast. My neighbor 3/4 miles away had the same kind of unit. On windy days, we would hear his “train” and see dirt blow up and count about 30 seconds before the gust arrived and our “train horn” went off.
Well now its nearly ten years later, and I’m blessed to know a couple of real wind power experts. One has a 120′ wind tower that I locate wireless equipment on, and we’ll be getting his story here in the near future.
What is your experience with wind turbines? Ever make your own? Tell us about your experience below!
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