yes, windmills to generate electricity. I have a good windy location but all the wind powered generators I've seen are cost prohibitive
You could try doing a google search for "brake drum windmill". You should find all sorts of plans for building your own. If you're resourcefull you should be able to build one for 100-200 bux.. possibly cheaper if you have a mass of old parts to scavenge..
Have you purchased a copy of "Home Power" magazine or read it at your library if available? Peruse the ads and you will find that there are some reasonable ones advertised. Reasonable of course is determined by each individual. Cost per KWH would be how I would judge reasonable. One of the cheaper models does have more blade noise with it than some of the others. Take that into consideration before making a purchase. Target stores were a wind generator/charger franchisee for awhile. You might check with a Target store near you. I don't know if they are still carrying the units or not. While the generator/charger is fairly inexpensive, the tower, installation, and controls are a bigger cost. Also batteries to properly utilize the power produced. If you wish to home build a unit, the Savonious rotor style looks relatively simple to construct. I now have access to free poly barrels so may give one a try. I also bought a salvage auto so have an alternator to play around with.
..................here is a very interesting website I found a while back. They seem to be very innovative as they build things from , common , everyday parts using some very powerful magnets...www.otherpower.com ...............They built a "Wind Gin" from everyday parts available to anybody who lives close to a junk yard . You will have to wind your own coils , and BUY the magnets from them but it's alot cheaper than any of the Commmercially available air gins on the market......fordy.....
Greetings from Montana: We have a couple of cheap wind generators that are working well for us. One, the first, is an Air 402 12 volt from Southwest Air, it is a bit noisy in very high winds but is not too close to the house so we dont mind. The second is an AirX403 12 volt that is a bit quieter. Our average winds here at 40 feet up are about 20 mph so this works well for us. Good Luck!
We use the airex403 on our wireless towers for are braodband customers along with solar panels, actually had the wind shear off one pole that was 30 feet [same wind ripped more roof off my barn 7 miles away] but we find that even the wind generatoris not enough to keep a full charge on 4-6 batteries with only a computer tower, and inverter nad a one amp amplifer going all the time, hence the solar panels... and of course since the cultural hub is in central idaho and so far north we have a genset for the wintertime. the folks at airex told us that we might need as many as 3 units to keep the batteries up since we had problems keeping the voltage up.... but those units are only about $600.00 so they are really fairly inexpensive for a remote site. was even thinking of putting one up on a pair of trojan L-16's for my chicken coop for the winter..... if i could figger out how to keep the batteries from freezing. William
.................. .........................Actually , that's my exwifey # 4 , cavorting in circles in that Whirlly Gig chasing her alimony check that I sent to her written on the First Nat'l Bank of Bucknaked, Tx . She , always did enjoy going in circles and now she is getting paid for IT. ........fordy.....
