Until recently, my biggest holdup in making anything that spins in the wind was not having my own workshop. I had wonderful ideas but no real way of making them up.
My old high school advertised for a Network Manager, I applied and got it! I've been in the job now for about 6 months and I'm good friends with the technicians in the design and technology department. I mentioned in conversation to the chap who was in one day about how I'd got a stepper motor from a printer and would love to make some blades for it as a wind turbine. No sooner had I finished describing what I'd been after than he'd turned on the band saw, cut up some plastic, got out the heater bar and started forming some small blades!
I am very much looking forward to this. I've seen spools of magnet wire in the office already... We've got one turbine on the roof of the school and around 4kW of solar panels on the roof. Putting up another turbine that we made ourselves would be ace and I'm hoping to go that way if I can.
For someone who's not built any wind generator before, what would be a good first step. Full size blades, alternator or... something else? I want to build something that's effectively just "proof of concept" first of all, if it only lights up some LEDs and gets the 10-14 year old kids thinking about renewable power, it'll still be very worthwhile.
I'm already famous in the school for running my car on sunflower oil. It'd be great to put up a turbine built in the school too.
froggie
