Off-grid living for me has been a long series of slow, expensive steps. My home is atop a 140' mesa in the far western Oklahoma Panhandle. I have electric service in the valley below, but balked at the cost of bringing it up the rocky cliff. I started with a snall solar battery maintainer just to charge the cell phone. Kerosene lamps, hauled water, and a wood stove rounded out my meager utilities systrms. In 2007, I added 500 watts solar. An Air-X was erected on a 50' tower in January of 2008. The winds I endure in this location quickly took on a new value as the noisy little turbine proved to far exceed Southwest Windpower's monthly estimates. It is producing an astounding 49 KWH/mo average. A well was drilled in the valley and I put a grundfos pump in it' powered by 4 40 watt kyrocera panels, pumping the water up on the mesa. Disaster struck in July, 08. My brother and I were out building a small dam when it started hailing. The first stones were baseball size, then quickly grew to softball sized bombs! He shouted, "We're dead!"' (We were a good 1/4 mi from any kind of solid cover). I blurted out to the negative but secretly feared he was right! The aftermath left us both bruised, but very much alive. The solar panels did not fare so well. One of the Kyroceras at the well was beat to a pulp and one of the 120 watt Mitsubishis at the house had a fatal blow. How the rest survived is amazing. The Air-X survived unscathed. My renewable energy system was now aprox 100 KWH/mo.
After a year and a half of thinking about it and half a year of gathering parts, I built my first 10' turbine, using Otherpower's plans, and flat metal parts. It is on a 80' tower, about 120' from the 24v battery bank. I used 1x2x1/2 magnets.Prelininary results show it producing 2 A mps before the Air-X even starts turning. It starts to furl at around 28 Amps with a measured peak of 35 amps. It has produced around 4 KWH several days and near 10 yesterday. It will be intetesting to see how it performs in the windy months.