Wind Power Generators

 With home energy cost rising steadily with no end in sight, many homeowners have turned to renewable energy to power their houses.  Wind power generators in particular look very attractive—after all, haven't people used windmills to power water pumps and grain mills for over a thousand years?  How hard could it be to build your own?

There's just one problem: how exactly do you convert wind into electricity for your home power outlets?

This article will give you a brief overview of how to use the wind to power your light bulbs.  It will explain how turbines convert wind into electricity, and describe the key equipment needed to use that electricity in your home.

HOW DO WIND TURBINES CREATE ELECTRICTY?

In short, simple terms, electricity can be generated by spinning a wire coil between a set of magnets.  The question, of course, is how you get that coil to spin.

The coal-fired power plants that currently generate most of the electricity in the world use coal to boil water into steam.  The steam is then used to turn the vanes of a rotor, which then spins the wire coil between the magnets, generating electricity.  A wind turbine uses the wind to turn the vanes of a windmill rotor, thus spinning the wire coil and creating electricity.  
 

HOW DOES THIS ELECTRICITY GET INTO MY WALL OUTLETS?

A home wind turbine system consists of four pieces of equipment: a wind turbine (described above), a charging controller, one or more rechargeable batteries, and an electrical inverter.  

After the wind turbine, the next piece of equipment you need is a charging controller.  The charging controller regulates the flow of electricity from the wind turbine to the battery packs.  When the batteries are low, the charging controller sends electricity from the wind turbine to the batteries.  When the batteries are full, it cuts off the flow of electricity to them.  This is important—overcharging batteries can permanently damage them, or even make it explode.

Next, you need one or more batteries.  The batteries store the electricity generated when the wind is blowing, but still provide a steady stream of electricity to the inverter on days when the wind is still.  Obviously, the more batteries you have, the more electricity you have available on windless days.  If you live in a place where the wind may stop for days at a time, you'll want to use a lot of batteries.  

Make sure you use deep-cycle batteries—they are designed to be discharged and recharged hundreds, even thousands of times.  AGM and gel cell deep cycle batteries are the best to use, as they require relatively little maintenance and last much longer than wet cell lead acid batteries.

Finally, you need an electrical inverter.  An electrical inverter converts the DC electricity from the batteries into the 120-volt AC electricity in your wall outlets (which almost everything in your house runs on).  Be sure to use a "sine wave inverter", not a "square wave inverter".  Some devices in your house will not run on square wave AC current, but everything will run on sine wave AC current.

A NOTE OF CAUTION: Please do not use this brief article as a "how-to" guide for building wind turbines.  Electricity is very dangerous.  Even a small wind turbine generates enough electrical current to kill a person, and if you don't wire your house properly, you could burn it down.  It is best to have professional tradesmen install your home wind turbine.  If you insist on building your own, at the very least have a certified electrician inspect and approve it before you turn it on.