Hi George - good thought, I often think the same thing myself sometimes. I'll offer some of my thoughts your posting.
" Cost of living going up after Katrina rolled through the area, then the energy bills here increased by 25%."
The cost of energy seems to be rising quickly all over!
" I have noticed that the direction of the board sponsors has been to bigger wind mills in order to gain more power. Custom cut parts and laser cut plates. It's really great to see such nice equipment being produced, but is getting beyond the reach of many "Do It Yourself" types interested in doing as much as they can for themselves."
The cost is still pretty small (if it works out) compared to a 'store bought' turn - key system. Very small by comparison. I think, especially once things start getting larger and the whole system starts becoming large and somewhat expensive (batteries - inverter - conductors - towers etc...) the I hate to save a few bucks and make a mess with a torch when I could pay somebody to cutout really nice parts. There's no doubt in my mind that windpower becomes less expensive per KWH as the machines get larger.
More and more specialized, if you will.
"Is there a chance of projects in refining smaller systems using methods that do not include the cost of having parts cut out or laser cut disk plates. Such as using single thickness disk brake rotors or large metal "blind" pipe flanges and other readily available parts? "
Yes, I think lots of that is going on here by different folks. Some great stuff lately about using hard drive magnets - salvaged wire and other parts. I think we did a lot there with brake rotors and all and they work fine - the machines are a bit clunkier but they work just as well. Past that sort of thing though I'm not sure to simplify or salvage more stuff. No matter what we do, if its a serious system it's going to require batteries, an inverter - a tower etc... there will be expense. HOw much we save building the wind turbine itself by salvaging parts is probably fairly insignificant. Even building a machine - vs buying one is not always that big a savings (sometimes it is). Most of us do this because it's fun, practical decisions are not always fun!
"You know. Getting more "bang for the buck" out of the less cost intensive setups."
I agree... there are lots of compromises. To some degree lately I care about how the machine looks so Im willing to spend a bit to have things come out cleaner - and lighter weight.
"Just thinking that there might be room for refining smaller designs before going to larger ones that are less forgiving of error."
We're always doing that too and I usually try to post about our new ideas or what we think might be better ways of doing things. Every time we build a 10' machine we figure out some little improvement I think. We're also currently working on a very simple single rotor 7' machine which should be fun to test here in a week or two. While were not using brake rotors - we could just as well be and I think anybody can modify a design to use salvaged parts.
It's lots of fun - I think (hope) that we're always moving foward in one way or another.
