If your property will support a homemade wind turbine then you really need to start narrowing in your focus on making one. You see even if it’s a small unit that puts out very little actual power, the experience you will gain from making it you can put to use further down the road. Hey! The cost of gas and electricity is only going up.

Now perhaps you may have already noticed that DIY articles on how to build your own homemade wind turbine are pretty much a dime a dozen online. It seems that just about everyone wants to hold themselves out as an expert these days but I see just glaring problem and that is that they all seem to make it all look just a bit “too easy”.

For instance, the first thing you need to be aware of is that it takes a “good amount” of steady wind to power a homemade wind turbine and a good “breeze” just won’t cut it. As an example, perhaps you may have noticed that commercial wind-farms are located in high wind areas and even now offshore.

Another thing to take into consideration that the vast majority of DIY wind turbine information products fail to mention is that water can ruin your homemade wind turbine real quickly. So what this means, is that if you live in a “wet climate area”, that’s just one more thing that’s not in your favor.

Also if you’ve seen any of the articles that proclaim to show you how to build a homemade wind turbine for $200 or less, don’t believe it. For one thing good motors that will function as generators (if you want to use a motor) are getting harder to find and then there’s the problem of your propeller.

Now if you have seen any of the articles that explain how to cut propeller blades out of a hunk of plastic pipe do keep in mind that propellers made this way are highly inefficient. Consider looking online for an actual low cost wind propeller that will make full use of the wind you have available.

A good quality propeller that’s designed and built for powering a wind generator will deliver maximum performance and it’s that extra level of performance that can make the difference between a homemade wind turbine that actually makes electricity for you on low wind speed days.

At the same time keep in mind that the larger your propeller the greater the amount of stress on your support structure. Now a small propeller spinning like a “bat outa hell” is really no problem but once you move to a larger propeller, vibration, and stress do become an issue.

Perhaps you may have driven past a commercial wind farm and wondered to yourself why the huge propellers on the generators seem to be turning so slowly. Well now you know why they use gears to spin the generator at a high RPM while the larger blades spin at safe low speed.

Still yet another item to address, is the tower that your homemade wind turbine is going to be mounted on. Now if you plan on building a small light generator to simply to have some fun with then you can easily get by with the flimsy tower made from water pipe and guy-wires that you may have already seen in the DIY articles online.

Something like that will work great for powering a couple of lights or a small laptop but if you plan on building a larger scale unit to provide a usable amount of power for your home, you’ll need something different. You’ll for sure need a taller, more heavy duty tower.

There are some great information products online that deal strictly with buying, and building towers for a homemade wind turbine and the monetary figure that most of them hold out, is that 50% of your total cost will be for your tower alone. Even so this isn’t chiseled in stone.

For instance I read a fantastic article on the topic that showed pictures and explained how a group of people cut a tall pine tree to fashion a tower out of in the forest area that they were working in. A highly effective solution, using what they had at hand.

The Bottom Line on Building a Homemade Wind Turbine

• A $200 unit spinning a motor that’s small enough to fit in the palm of your hand is going to generate minimal power.

• Electrical components exposed to open weather in a wet climate will quickly deteriorate.

• A large well designed and balanced propeller is needed to drive a generator capable of producing a sizable quantity of power, but it must be geared down to prevent vibration problems.

• A homemade wind turbine large enough to produce a usable amount of electricity requires a tall, secure, well built tower.