Windmill Energy

If you’re thinking of building your own windmill, one of the main areas to consider is windmill design.  If you are in a populated neighborhood or suburb, you will want to check with the neighborhood associations and zoning boards to make sure that they are OK with the design and placement of your windmill.

It is always a good idea to have your planned lined out for them, along with a diagram of your property and figures on how much energy and money you will be saving.  You might get a few converts along the way!

Here is an example to get you started:

A 250-kW turbine installed at the elementary school in Spirit Lake, Iowa, provides an average of 350,000 kWh of electricity per year, more than is necessary for the 53,000-square-foot school. Excess electricity fed into the local utility system earned the school $25,000 in its first five years of operation. The school uses electricity from the utility at times when the wind does not blow. This project has been so successful that the Spirit Lake school district has since installed a second turbine with a capacity of 750 kW. (For further information on this project, see at the Web site of the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives.)

Fortunately, I am building my off the grid home way out in the woods, so there is no neighborhood association that I have to comply with.  However, I am still doing research on the best designs and the best ways to make my own windmill power.

Here’s a little video of a really cool windmill design from a guy at the Maker Faire in Austin, Texas.

Originally posted 2009-05-07 18:15:46. Republished by Blog Post Promoter

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