Generating your own electricity for folding

Has anyone here considered (or have done) generating their own electricity? It seems to be pretty viable to create your own wind turbine and if you have the space to put it somewhere where there is plenty of wind then why not?

I have looked up various sources and it can be done given enough time and I would quite like to build my own sometime this summer. My dad is a carpenter, my girlfriend's step-father is an engineer and my grandfather builds motorbike engines so I have plenty of tools (and help) available.

Anyone tried generating their own electricity? I would use a wind turbine to power a small folding farm and I do have access to open land with wind although no Internet in that area (I am working on it).

 

I'll have a chat to my mates brother. He was looking into living off grid

 

If you do go ahead with the build then let me know - its definitely something we'd want to cover in the mag and on bit-tech.

 

That would be good I have done quite a bit of research and I believe it to be viable to myself. Will start drawing up a plan this weekend (or even buying the necessary parts).

The only problem I can see right now is that the land does not have any sort of Internet access. Mobile broadband is one way of doing it although I do not want to be paying a monthly fee on it. Nonetheless it would be good to build my own wind turbine.

On that note, does anyone have a UPS I can have?

 

I'd looked at wind before as I live half way up a mountain, and there's almost always wind blowing.

I'd looked at premade stuff, but been put off by the initial up-front price, so I'd be interested to see what you come up with - especially if it's much cheaper than off the shelf stuff.

As for Internet, I recall a thread here a few months ago from a guy who was trying to set up a wide area wireless network using focussed unidirectional antennae (a variation on the cantenna, I think) - but I can't remember the username of the person who started the thread, or how successful they were in the end.

How close are you to the proposed location - how far would the wireless have to travel? I guess if the only data transfer is WUs for a folding farm, the connection doesn't need to be full speed?

 

Not to burst anyones bubble here but wind turbines (small ones at least, for home use) don't generate enough electricity to power large household appliances. Computers that are drawing 100% of the potential power they require are definately considered as large household appliances, and if you factor in up to 4 cards you quickly realize that you might need a whole farm of turbines just to power one folding rig.

I haven't done the exact maths yet, I am only speaking from what I have heard but I have three very useful contacts in the renewable energy business - My brother who is an estimator for Bassetts, a partner business of Saint Gobain and supplier of (among other things) home & industrial heating and renewable energy source hardware.

The others are the couple who own and run Elf Combustion Ltd, a commercial and home heating equipment supplier and installer. They have moved towards specialising in renewable sources equipment over the past couple of years and Gary is a very talented engineer. He should be able to tell me everything I need to know about generating electricity using wind or solar equipment once I get him sat down to talk it over. I would like to at least partially power the garage that my farm is going into using natural resources like solar or wind energy.

 

I understand what you are saying but I am not trying to power anything major. I may be able to get hold of 3 broken laptops (Core 2 Duo, 2.6Ghz) all have broken screens so they will be scrapped but I may have them. They draw 69W at maximum load with the screen on so without the screen and hdd I think it will operate at about 55W which I think a wind turbine will be able to power.

I've wanted to do this for a while as a project and this may be a good excuse to do so.

 

Indeed, you should be able to get 55W out of a couple of turbines. Like I said, I would only be partially powering my farm with energy sources like wind and solar electricity if it works out to be worthwhile, but if so it will at least cut the bills down a bit

 

Sounds like an interesting project mate, defiantly worth a go to see whats achievable.
If you can get it to produce around 500watts it will run a nice multi 9600GSO rig which produces great ppd for low power usage

What did you need a UPS for? testing? I might be able to get my hands on a small APC 700watt one but cant promise the condition of the batteries!

 

Well if its solar power you want take a look @ this link http://www.solartechnology.co.uk/solar-power-stations.htm I got a charger there for my iphone its only small but works, they have solar kits for much bigger things on there . Now that I have a few slates missing off my roof maybe I could put a few solar panles up there instead. Cure cancer and powered from the sun ........

 

there was a bunch of guys who graduated from MIT (don't quote me here, I'm trying to remember everything as accurately as I can) who were working on a tube style wind farm where several smaller turbines would be put in a tube, one after another, to benefit from the same wind.

they saw an exponentially greater return from a much smaller unit, at a much lower cost than the large 3 bladed towers that some of us might see dotting the country these days (such as the ones in Atlantic City NJ)... I'm trying to remember the name of the project now.... I'll get back to you guys on it

 

500W is very optimistic and would require a large turbine and/or high wind which I am not going to build. This is a project and even if it only powers a single laptop (or not even that) its still worth it!

I was hoping to be able to use a UPS to store and regulate power but it seems the majority of them require an input of 240V which won't be prodcued.

I would assume it would take up quite a bit of space. Also every turbine along the tube would reduce wind speed meaning the last turbine would be running the slowest. I would have thought they would run better in the open where wind is less restricted (with more turbulence though).

Edit: When I meant small folding farm I meant a few laptops!

 

http://www.scoraigwind.com/axialplans/index.htm

That might be of interest to you in terms of how much power wind turbines of certain sizes can produce

Though it may be a little bigger than you are aiming for. I am interested in renewable energy sources but living at home I have no way of doing it.

 

My dream would be to live in an old water mill, convert the water wheel so rather than turning a grind stone, have it turning a generator, thus a hydroeletric power station, and teh power of water could definatly produce enough torque to turn a big gearbox to ramp the RPM up for the generator.

Then you could power a UPS and a whole bunch of laptops

 

Google for "Micro hydro" - not uncommon in the right places.

 

James - are you interested in solar power generation? I calculate I may be able to generate enough to run a small machine during daylight hours! I'm about to start getting quotes.

 

Yes indeed - I think any sort of renewable power generation source would be of interest to our readers, and not just the folders.

 

Also it would put your electricity bill down.

 

That would be the whole point of it

 

I guess.

Do you know how much 600W 24/7 would be ( for a month )?