THE ANSWER IS BLOWIN' IN THE WIND
(Page 8 of 10)
November/December 1973
By James B. DeKorne
... OR YOU CAN BUILD FROM SCRATCH
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Perhaps you can't afford a new wind generator, can't locate a used one in restorable condition and really don't want electricity for much more than a small stereo set and a few 25-watt light bulbs.In that case, if you're a do-it-yourself type who enjoys tinkering with mechanical devices, you can build your own wind generator out of automobile parts. I've seen several homemade units now (and perhaps it was only coincidental that none of them were working at the time of my visit).
About the most output you can expect from a wind generator made from car parts is 600 watts. I must confess that I can't get very excited about putting in the necessary time, energy and money for such a small return ... but I'll try to withhold my prejudice while I tell you what I've managed to learn about home-constructed rigs.
The November 1972 issue of Popular Science magazine has an article with detailed plans for budding a wind generator. While the design is very interesting, and the concept for making the propellers is downright brilliant, please notice that no where in the article does it tell you how many watts the machine will produce. I visited the commune in Wisconsin where that generator was built and—while the designer, Hans Meyer, wasn't there on the day I visited—one of the residents showed me where the generator tower was lying in the weeds at the back of a pasture. He told me that the unit hadn't produced enough watts to be practical and had been abandoned.
Issue 20 of MOTHER contains an article by Jim Sencenbaugh which describes a 500-watt wind generator. The piece includes an offer to sell detailed plans for building the rig and—from the tone of the article and the photographs and drawings which accompany it—the machine looks like a good one. If you don't need any more than 500 watts, Sencenbaugh's design could be the unit to go for.
Eugene Eccli-co-editor of Alternate Sources of Energy, and an instructor at New Paltz College in New York-built a wind generator, with the help of his students, from one of Hans Meyer's designs (Photo No. 6). The concept is ingenious and uses an automobile differential to transfer rotation from the horizontal plane of the propeller shaft to a vertical plane perpendicular to it (see Drawing No. 5).
The "drive shaft" of Eccli's setup is lengthened to accommodate the high tower, and an ordinary automobile wheel is attached at the bottom to provide a "pulley" which runs a fan belt to an automobile alternator (see Photo No. 7). The main difficulty with this arrangement is that it generates considerable friction, and the unit will only put out usable amounts of energy in extremely high winds. Also. gear oil tends to leak from the differential housing because of the unusual angle at which the unit must be mounted on the tower.
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