This project goes into detail on how to build a mini wind turbine.The wind turbine is a nice addition to your solar generator system for times when it’s cloudy and you are not receiving as much sunlight as you normally.
STEP 1 : BUILDING THE TURBINE BLADES
The first step is to build some cheap PVC blades, what kind of motor we’re going to be using, and how we’re going to attach this to the motor.
We are making six blades or rotors here. What we want to do is we want to cut our PVC pipe to length first.
Once you’ve got it cut to length, then you want to take your straight edge again and Marco line down the center and cut it in half. Make sure that you do that on both sides. One on this side. So that they’re perfectly in the middle so that you’ll get two even sides.
We need to cut a small little block down at the blade end, where we are going to put a drill hole and put a screw through it so that it attaches to the hub. On the top of the blade, we’re going to cut away some of the material to resemble a swept wing, kind of at an angle.
STEP 2 : ATTACHING THE MOTOR
These are 14-inch long blades that are attached to the hub using set screws attached to the motor. The 12V motor used here is a 300 RPM geared motor which would be its maximum speed and it produces 600 milliamps when it’s fully loaded.
The motor is placed inside a One and half-inch PVC pipe, another PVC Tee is connected from where the wires will down to the bottom where another 7-foot pipe act as the tower or pole.
The end of the pole goes into a shower drain which is then attached to a piece of wood that acts as a solid base.
STEP 3 : BUILDING THE YAW SYSTEM
For the YAW system at the back end, a tail vane is made of a cheap flashing material that is bolted between an 8-inch piece of PVC.Put a hole through the middle of it with a bolt in between so that it can’t move anywhere.
STEP 4 : THE BASE
We use an old OSB for the base, the size is about seven inches square. And then I just have a piece of treated lumber on the bottom. It’s attached to these ball bearings so it can spin around. The Shower drain PVC is placed in the middle through some ball bearings. Route the wiring down through the hole to connect to the charge controller.
The next step is the wiring through the piping. We just need to connect these terminals to the appropriate sides of the motor.
Image Credit : LDSreliance
