Plans for a Simple DIY Wind Generator

The Chispito Wind Generator is a small, DIY wind power generator capable of generating 100 Watts in a 30 mph wind. It starts charging a 12-Volt battery in a 7-10 mph wind, and you can build one with the relatively short list of inexpensive parts and tools found here. The Chispito Wind Generator uses an old treadmill motor for the generator.

If your electricity use is average (around 11,500 kWh/year for US households) and you lived somewhere with 30 mph winds 24-7, this thing could provide about 7.5% of your power needs.  Nobody I know lives anywhere that is consistently that windy, but the Chispito Wind Generator could be a fun and educational DIY project in a lot of places. Here is an 80-meter wind resource map of the US that may give you some idea of the wind speeds in your area, although 80 meters is a bit high for a back yard wind generator.

For pictures and build instructions, check out "How to Build a Chispito Wind Generator" page.

You make the blades on this baby using some cut up PVC pipe and sand paper. I love that the tools and materials needed to build these blades are so close to universally accessible. If you follow this blog, bets are probably good that you could finish a significant percentage of this wind power generator project before making a trip to the hardware store.

All that said, the  DIY aviation nut in me is screaming that we need an inexpensive, open-source way to optimize airfoils for domestic-use, DIY wind power generators. Look out for a future post on the huge increases in power generation that can be obtained by using well-optimized airfoils, and my ideas about how we can make such airfoils inexpensive and widely available.