$30 DIY Kilowatt Wind Turbine (2017) | Hacker News Reader

$30 DIY Kilowatt Wind Turbine (2017)

opensourcelowtech.org

183 pointssimonpure91 comments

This is what I call "empty content". It gives a promise: 1KW of DIY wind power for $30. And then it shows a bunch of pictures and some extremely basic instructions. From the page:

"Attaching [the DC generator] is mostly just a matter of stripping everything off the motor, attaching a pulley to the shaft, running a toothed timing belt around the wheel rim (with a layer of nylon strapping bolted to the wheel to protect the belt and give it something to grab onto) and attaching the motor to the pole frame as shown, with long bolts so you can easily adjust the tension on the belt."

Strip motor, attach pulley, build a tensioner. The text makes it sound trivial, but those are non-trivial steps. Attaching a pulley to a scrap motor can be quite an ordeal. Building a tensioner that works requires fabrication.

I'm not saying it's super complicated, I'm saying it's not "oh by the way make a tensioner" or "attach a pulley- done!" Glossing over details like that with a magic wand is what makes such projects appear even more unapproachable.

For those wanting to avoid complex fabrication, this [1] kind of turbine is much simpler anyway, since it requires no gearing or complex mechanical bits. Simply make that out of a big stiff plastic or metal sheet, and bolt it onto the front of a motor. Then point it in the direction of the prevailing wind and you're done. The electrical side is complex or expensive if you want to feed into the grid, but if you just hook up a car lightbulb you can see it working easily.

[1]: https://w7.pngwing.com/pngs/511/987/png-transparent-toy-toy-...

Well it is DIY after all.

I vastly prefer such content being available, with its imperfections, than it being held back unpublished because of lack of simplified IKEA style guide for less experienced/handy people.

I don't disagree with you- what I am making a point of is that it glosses over hard things without explaining that this is in fact non-trivial. It's that "magic wand" approach to DIY that I find irritating.

I know what you mean.

This is exemplified by the "How to Draw and Owl" meme: https://i.imgur.com/RadSf.jpeg

But for a skilled enough reader it can actually become reasonable to use instructions like these.

For example imagine musicians in a band writing a song, and one of them tells the other: "OK, here we need a part that goes a bit like that, and then gets darker, and then some major scales at the end, etc."

Yeah, this is some real /r/restofthefuckingowl content. I especially love when there is one particularly tricky bit in a build and you find a video talking about how to make it so you watch the video and they skip right over the tricky bit to cover the easy stuff in excruciating detail.

A certain irony (projection?) with you complaining by using that kind of argument but then not actually feeding back regarding the exact elements you think should be expounded on.

I think the instructions are meant for the turbine itself and the applications such as attaching a motor are listed as ‘only a guide’ along with this:

> If and when you get to this part of the process please email us directly or check out the Facebook group, where the community can help you build what you need and you can follow what others have done already.

Indeed. And this is what makes it empty content. "1KW for $30" is the video, but that's not what's in the video, is it? It's instead some oversimplified "put metal on wheel" instructions that completely leave out how on earth this makes 1KW of power.

If you want THAT information, you need to join their group. And now you realize that this isn't a tutorial at all. It's an Advertisement.

The group is also free to join. There's no monetisation of this project.

Hi Daniel_Connell, thank you for the reply. I didn't imply it was for profit, but rather that the content is only useful for getting people to join your group.

I can appreciate the effort you've put into the project, but leaving glossing over details makes "DIY" a buzzword instead of a method. The video gives zero information as to how it can be turned into a 1KW turbine and it leaves out so many vital details.

I appreciate what you've done, but if you want to make it truly accessible then you have to give all the details. Show the different ways it can be done with parts anyone can get; Not just the windmill part, the entire generator. Show somebody how they can use that electricity. Otherwise, it is just a toy project.

I am sorry for being so critical but I hope that you can see that this is constructive. You've clearly put a lot of effort into this, but you're selling yourself short by not making it complete, and if you're truly into open source, then you're selling your project short too.

Indeed. The next iteration of the tutorial will have more info for attaching alternators/generators in various ways now that I've had more of a chance to develop options for that side of things.

The matter of what to plug it into electrically and how tho isn't really tutorialisable, at least not in a one size fits all sense, as every situation is wildly different and needs to be designed bespoke. Hence the need for a discussion forum type approach to that bit.

Yes you are correct about that. I think you could add value to such videos by explaining that part of it, even in a very general way, rather than just passing over it. I am now following your YouTube channel and look forward to seeing more. I think wind energy is fantastic at a small scale. Scaled too big, you end up with things like non-recyclable composite blades :(

yeah, i watched the whole youtube video hoping it would get to something useful, but it seems to be mostly a "how to bend sheet metal" tutorial.

that's not really the part i need a tutorial for...

I would need a tutorial for it - And I would look up "how to bend sheet metal" because I'm guessing there's 100 better tutorials that aren't specific to this one problem.

Yeah, essentially. The tutorial is in the process of being updated, which is mostly the addition of that side of things; how to attach the generation capacity. I made it as is because that's the extent, the physical turbine itself, which can be fairly standardised. Everything after that, ie what to plug it into and how, will largely depend on each individual implementation, and so is more of a conversation than a step by step, and so hence the FB forum group.

But like the next version will have more info on next steps.

Neat design (especially the blades), but I have these issues:

1. It's only $30 of parts if you get most of the parts for free (especially if you consider the mounting hardware).

2. You're screwed if you can't get hold of those alu sheets from a printers shop - I have no idea where I would find them.

3. There's little info on how to turn the rotary motion into electrical power, and no info on expected power output.

4. The published design, with one bicycle wheel, does not look strong enough (a later video shows a new design with two wheels, but then you have alignment issues). There's a big bending moment on the axle, and those old-fashioned freewheel hubs are known to snap axles (I've snapped one myself).

5. None of the electrics are weatherproof, but that's par for the course for homebrew stuff!

2. Sheet aluminum is readily available worldwide. Used litho plates are some of the cheapest source of large sheet aluminum but those are far from the only source. Any industrial metal supplier will be able to supply this part, but the price per sheet is likely to be higher than $30.

Many things are "readily available worldwide", if you ignore the cost.

You could get sheet metal at any place that sells HVAC supplies.

I don't live in a country that has such broad adoption of HVAC supplies.

for future reference McMaster-Carr (https://www.mcmaster.com/) sells almost any mechanical thing a DIYer could ever want. Shipping on big items might be prohibitive but the selection is vast.

I don't live in the US.

Does it have to be aluminum? Looks like it could be replaced with thin PVC (or other plastic) sheets, which is cheap and also used in advertisement banners in most of the world.

An induction motor works as a generator, a couple of old washing machine motors can work well. Some people made wind turbines out of LG washer radial motors.

Many of the fabrication techniques rely on sharp angle bends in the sheet, which would not be ideal in plastic.

VATs are terribly inefficient. For very little money more you should probably build one of these:

https://www.otherpower.com/turbineplans.html

It will make a lot more power and will teach you far more about turbine and blade design than the one on display here. It is a fun project and as such you can't really go wrong as a starter project but if you intend to actually use it to make meaningful electrical power then please go with another design.

I believe you are right. As far as I know VATs are a solution for areas with turbulent wind only. To generate at least some wind power.

Their big advantage is that they do not need to be pointed into the wind, and appear conceptually simple, they also have their generator on the ground which is an advantage. But they suffer from oscillation and vibration and such low TSR designs as the one in the article will suffer from shading. The concept can work, but typically the machines end up requiring a lot of maintenance and extremely careful design.

The biggest of these, the Cap Chat Aeole ran for an embarrassingly short time before destroying its main bearing.

http://www.wind-works.org/cms/index.php?id=506

It was a most impressive machine though.

A more successful project was run in the Rocky Mountains where a number of such Darrieus rotors were in operation for quite a while. Even so, the concept is problematic and will likely never see widespread use, even though you'll see a flare up every couple of years when people new to the matter think they have found gold.

That page was a little confusing to me because the navigation is in the sidebar only and the sidebar is styled so that the subpages for the project all appear visually at the same level of indentation (or should I say lack of visual indentation) as the page you linked to.

From navigating to other pages on the site and from inspecting the HTML of the page as well I found and confirmed that the pages belonging to the "Build our 10 foot diameter wind turbine!" are the ones starting with "Stator Mold" and inclusively ending with "Rectifier".

Aside from that confusion the pages look interesting.

Here are the links for the subpages:

Stator Mold – https://www.otherpower.com/statormold.html

Coil Winder – https://www.otherpower.com/coilwinder.html

Stator – https://www.otherpower.com/stator.html

Metal Work – https://www.otherpower.com/metalwork.html

Metal Work part 2 – https://www.otherpower.com/metalwork2.html

Blade Carving – https://www.otherpower.com/bladecarving.html

Magnet Rotors – https://www.otherpower.com/magnetrotors.html

Alternator Assembly – https://www.otherpower.com/alternatorassembly.html

Blade Assembly – https://www.otherpower.com/bladeassembly.html

Rectifier – https://www.otherpower.com/rectifier.html

It's great, but is that really $30 worth of materials? Maybe for a company doing this on some small scale, but an individual sourcing these parts? Especially building a tower!

It feels like the flaps exist to reduce the need for welding or rivets, but then the thing has so many ?bolts? and drilled holes. Also the precision needed is quite high to get it to fit together like that.

Personally I would look to remove the curved structures and use straight edges instead. I like the idea of using a bike - I think you could go further and use more bike parts. In the bike you may have useful parts such as:

1. 2 wheels - an extra wheel could give your wind socks more structure.

2. Bike frame - use as the structure to hold it upright. (Not as tall as those towers, but perhaps something that could be mounted on a roof.)

3. Brake cables - use to stabilize the structure.

4. Chain and gears - drive the DC motor.

The other thing to really consider is taking that varying DC voltage and doing something with it. I think generally 13V or so would be sensible - you could use it to trickle charge lead batteries and 12V step down circuits are relatively easy to come by.

I can't really think of something that could be sourced from other parts though... Technically I think the 12V ash-tray electrical output (between the driver and passenger) is directly connected to the battery - if so they should technically be able to handle automotive voltages which could be as high as 40+V (a battery lead bouncing on top of a battery terminal in conjunction with the battery charger can pulse high voltages throughout the car). Somehow though I doubt some cheap Chinese charger could be relied upon to have such electrical robustness.

For anyone interested in actually building this def check out the facebook group: https://www.facebook.com/groups/windturbinemakers/

Hugh Piggot [1] is pretty active in the goup and he is an OG in the DIY wind turbing game. Def worth checking out his book as well [2]

For anyone who is interested in a deeper dive into wind turbines the Wind Energy Handbook [3] is worth your time.

Also Daniel who built this also built a pretty cool DIY wifi dish [4]. I couldn't speak to efficacy but still interesting.

[1] https://scoraigwind.co.uk

[2] https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wind-Turbine-Recipe-Book-hands/dp/B...

[3]https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wind-Energy-Handbook-2e-Burton/dp/0...

[4] https://opensourcelowtech.org/wifidish.html

Hmmm 60km/h winds are not exactly common and I'd like to see independent testing before I'm willing to accept you can get 1kw out of it even at that speed. It isn't impossible... wind speed and turbine size have an exponential relationship to power generated.

This site has various maps of average wind speeds at 30m: https://windexchange.energy.gov/maps-data?category=residenti...

Parts of the bay are are in the 5-5.5 range, which is only around 18km/h. That isn't a huge amount of power - assuming you could get permission to put up a 30m tall pole (LOL not a chance).

If you live in the sticks and if your location happens to have good average wind speeds this can be useful but as I noted: wind generation is not linear scaling like solar. You get exponentially more energy as you scale up wind. Solar is probably a much better fit for almost everyone at the residential and small commercial level. Solar is basically not sensitive to height at all. Solar can be deployed at small but useful scales and expanded over time.

Solar can be a lot trickier at small scales at in harsher climates, than wind. Obscured by trees, snow build up, overcast skies, etc.

Of the three main types of micro/diy renewable energy solar is the least dependent on geographic features as you say. Wind requires high ground in a preferably high wind corridor (try using google maps drive around dodge city Kansas). Micro hydro requires a stream or spring with high head and a lot of flow.

I spent a lot of time researching land in my area to find either of these and they just don’t come available very often. Certain areas are well suited for one or the other obviously, Kansa for wind, Appalachia for micro hydro. But with solar you can put it any damn place.

A fourth way is burning agricultural waste or wood (net zero carbon emissions) to run a steam turbine to generate electricity. I don’t know if anyone really does this in practice. It takes quite a lot of fuel (and storing the fuel) to generate meaning full power continuously. Plus high pressure steam is dangerous.

> A fourth way is burning agricultural waste or wood (net zero carbon emissions) to run a steam turbine to generate electricity. I don’t know if anyone really does this in practice. It takes quite a lot of fuel (and storing the fuel) to generate meaning full power continuously. Plus high pressure steam is dangerous.

I've seen links to wood gas generators, which seems a lot more tractable than a homemade steam plant, although this is more micro and less diy; you could diy the wood gas part, but then you'd most likely put it into a commercially sourced generator. There are some commercially available all in one setups too (wood bits in, AC out). I haven't done this, be careful with carbon monoxide and icky condensed liquids.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wood_gas_generator

Wind turbines can be incredibly dangerous, I'd be worried if this was anywhere near my home. jacquesm wrote up his experiences making a wind turbine from scratch here: https://jacquesmattheij.com/how-to-build-a-windmill/

Pretty much anything can be incredibly dangerous if not used/done properly.

How are they dangerous?

If there is an accident you'll have a giant wind spill to clean up.

But more seriously large chunks of spinning metal can turn into deadly flying knives when things break. With a properly engineered windmill this is extremely rare and usually requires a severe amount of neglect. With some DIY project built from scraps you probably shouldn't mount it anywhere near people.

Hi all, this is my turbine build process, based on Ed Lenz's design. Thanks for the attention and input.

I can answer any questions you have.

Two questions: 1 - how are you converting the energy into electricity? The materials don't seem to mention that piece.

2 - How do you convert variable energy like wind into something stable and usable? IE: how do I hook this input into a household power system?

Edit: Ah, there are some answers to these questions at the bottom- I missed that part.,

1 - There's a couple options in terms of alternators / generators.

Hoverboard wheels are good in terms of cost and availability (in Western countries at least) and do a decent job tho will need to be geared up with a belt or similar to produce 12V charge voltage in realistic winds.

Direct drive washing machine motors are usually high enough voltage to direct drive, tho can be a little tricky to source.

Motorbike alternators will usually do a sufficient enough job, and are highly available in most parts of the world.

2 - The electrical side of things, ie charge control, batteries, load diversion, inversion, etc really needs to be tailored to each individual situation. We've got this Facbook group going: https://upload.facebook.com/groups/windturbinemakers/ for figuring out that side of things and others.

Maybe a broken gas generator would be a good option too? I’d guess the ICE component normally fails well before the generator part.

Yeah, that's not a bad idea. I've not come across any, but sure they'd be sourceable if specifically looked for.

Firstly, yes this turbine can be easily made for less than $30, including the alternator (but not usually the pole, charge control, batteries etc). At the moment I've got a particularly good contact with a local printers for the alu sheets and a full six vane version is costing me about $22 total.

The sheets are usually pretty easy to find, just ring around any printing companies in your area which do offset printing and you should find someone to sell them used to you for about $1-2 each. Sometimes they just give them to me for free.

Any ~0.3mm alu sheet will work just as well, but will cost more if bought new. Steel will work structurally, but is a lot harder to bend and cut so won't really work with the process documented in the tutorial.

The turbine (as in the general Lenz2 design, not my specific build) has been independently tested to about 25-35% mechanical efficiency, and does particularly well in turbulent and low clearance wind conditions compared to most horizontal axis turbines.

My website is indeed a bit bad. Sorry about that.

Anything else you'd like to know?

1. Where do you source parts for the pole?

2. How did you do these animations? Blender?

3. Do you have any relationship with lowtechmagazine.com?

Nice project, thanks for documenting it :)

1. It's usually just standard off the shelf items. Square steel tube, steel rope, turnbuckles, thimbles, D clamps, cable clamps.

2. Modeled in Rhino, everything else in Maya. I've not used Blender but I hear good things.

3. Not directly, but I'm a fan.

How did you make this terrific animated video?

Modeled in Rhino, everything else done in Maya. From a technical point of view it's fairly basic, bit of work tho. This one needs a bit of an update, and got a couple other bits of tech on the list for same...

Thank you for giving all these gifts out for free in the world. You could easily have made a paywalled site or sold everything in an expensive course, but you decided to share. Thank you very much, keep it up and ignore the chronic complainers, no amount of good will and effort is ever enough to keep them from typing away (instead of doing).

Cheers!

Thanks.

Hi Daniel,

Wanted to let you know that page layout seems to be broken -- entire bottom part is blank, and content appears in small window in top-right corner.

Seems like I am not the only one, too [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24867413

Yeah that site has been cobbled together by various mates over the years. Had a lot of people offer to fix it for me, but no one's really come through. Paid a guy, who somehow made it worse...

While people are commenting that $30 in materials is not very realistic, I find that's nothing compared to stating that 2 people can build this in 4 hours. I don't think it could be built in that amount of time if you used a large cnc router and had all the G-code already prepared. Looks to me like a week of work. I love the animations. Also the chain drive going around the bicycle rim is downright silly, you would have to weld gear teeth on the rim which would be extremely difficult.

I can confirm that I can make the three vane version myself from scratch in 3.5 hours. 90 minutes with pre-cut sheets. And is usually $20-30 all up including the alternator.

The chain drive concept is indeed no longer what I'm using. It kinda worked, but not as well as I would have liked so now it's either a automotive alternator belt or direct drive to a Smartdrive unit or equivalent.

Is it just me or is the page layout horribly broken? I see the video on the left, and the actual constrained to a box on the right, and this is without script- or adblockers...

Same for me, on current chrome.

Actual content is in about a quarter of the page, at top right. It's bad.

This seems like a good thread to ask this question: does anyone know a good place to find turbine curves/turbine maps for small fans used a turbines? It's pretty easy to find a fan curve for a small fan (e.g. under 12 inch diameter) but very very few will also have an available turbine map. As far as I know, there is no way to convert a fan curve to a turbine curve (I'd be very interested if such a thing existed!).

Does anyone have any help or suggestions?

JavaProp is a very powerful tool for generating propellers and numerically calculating performance characteristics. You can get some great results if you’re willing to push through the arcane UI.

http://mh-aerotools.de/airfoils/javaprop.htm

The tool works for any fluid, you have to configure the fluid density and viscosity for air. It can auto generate props based on some initial state, or if you have an existing prop you can measure the various parameters and feed that in.

What happens if the device shakes itself apart while rotating? This is not something that I would like to have in my backyard without any secure way of preventing parts of it from hitting people or my house (perhaps some kind of net).

If I was living in a rural area away from people and had a lot of space I would set one or more up as an experiment ~150 m fra the house.

It doesn't have blades like a fan so I guess it is abit safer? I mean the blades on this will not get an upwards trajectory if they fall off.

I don’t live in a windy area so I haven’t built it, but this looks like a brilliant approach. The idea of using recycled aluminum offset printing plates for the vanes is inspired.

This is really inspirational, according to the instructions it would also take only a day to make with a friend. A day well spent I would say.

Does anyone know what kind of generator setup you should get for charging a car battery? A link would be helpful. If used car generator is ok, how to get one from aftermarket?

The video is awesome, how it is made?

If you're looking for a complete solution, there are a decent number of small wind turbines designed for charging 12v batteries (car batteries) on yachts.

Here's the 1st company I found on google. I can't personally vouch for the product, but it should give you an idea of what's available.

https://www.leadingedgepower.com/le-450-wind-turbine-12-24-4...

Open source low tech has a good Youtube chan.

Here: https://www.youtube.com/user/SolarflowerOrg

You can get inspired a lot, if anyone is in to Warhammer 40k it looks like watching an Ork Mekboy.

This is better I think:

> A vaneless ion wind generator or power fence is a device that generates electrical energy by using the wind to move charged particles across an electric field. Ion wind generators are not commercially available, though working prototypes and proofs of concept have been created.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vaneless_ion_wind_generator

I couldn’t build that for $30 even if I had the tools already.

Very cool, although I think the price is a tad optimistic. It can also depend where you live. I have a lot of sun where I live, and I think that a solar panel system and batteries would be a better fit for me. Yes, batteries are expensive but there are no moving parts. I adore the concept of no moving parts because my time is already limited when it comes to DIY stuff and it makes it likely to still work 5 years from now.

Seems like an awesome project, where is the best place to mount this sort of thing and is it useful to people who live in the city surrounded by buildings?

I believe most are quite noisy if you have windows close to them.

It should be possible to design a quieter one and I'd be interested in seeing any references for a design like that.

>where is the best place to mount this sort of thing and is it useful to people who live in the city surrounded by buildings?

On a very high tower, 90ft or so above the nearest structure.

I currently also looked into a DIY wind turbine design and found the following design worth trying out: http://mumris.eu/bumerangai/dekoratyvus%20bumerangai1_files/...

I can imagine a few of these on the roof of a bar on a beach getting the sea breeze - possibly the vanes can be decorated too.

This is great and makes me excited and curious about the idea. If it was much more thorough and demonstrative of the details (ex: I have no clue how to build a tensioner) I might actually do it.

I would pay more for a kit of these parts with helpful documentation so that I could realistically built it myself.

Could you make a dyson fan work backwards as a generator and avoid the blade problem?

Dyson fans substitute one large, slow fan, for a small fast fan and then hydraulically gear that down.

Its an interesting idea. You would definitely create an uplift if air was blown through the fan and that could drive a turbine, and that turbine would be experiencing a much higher air speed, so you might be able to avoid the mechanical gearing. You'd have less moving parts, but probably lower efficiency.

You could also combine the fans with ducting and use a single generator. Ducting also has significant losses when compared with wiring, but if the generator is your biggest expense maybe its worth it?

Does it kill all the birds?

That's like $300 worth of materials at least.

Not clear to me how much Watt the device produces.

This kind of turbine is not very efficient. Its rated speed is approximately equal to its maximum speed because the blades will shade each other quite effectively and there is a very large amount of drag. They are reasonably safe to operate though because their RPM is limited due to the very large drag factor.

I dislike these getting-in-details explanations without giving even ballpark numbers.

The project cites 350W to 1000W depending on wind speed, which roughly corresponds to microwave oven consumption on different settings.

So, here is my short take on that: forget it.

A 1KW mill based on this principle might give you that power in a storm but not under normal circumstances.

For diy green energy it really seems that solar is a lots less hassle than wind

Is it bird friendly?

no this kills all the birds

Birds don't fly into this for the same reason they don't fly into chimneys; it's a fairly solid shape that they can see.

Horizontal axis turbines are more dangerous as the blades are thinner and fast moving.

>YOU WILL NEED Power drill, Metal Drill Bits, Craft Knife or Stanley Knife / Box Cutter, Tape Measure, 26 Inch Bike Wheel

Cool cool cool

>11 Aluminium lithographic offset printing plates

the. WHAT.

I actually laughed out loud when I got to that bit. It's a bit... mental... if I'm honest.. that whomever wrote this up included that. After reading through I can see this can just be substituted for general thin metal sheets which you can pick up from pretty much any hardware store. I assume it blows the $30 price point up a bit but that's far preferable than having that one, show-stoppingly esoteric essential item on the list.

This kind of thing is very cool weekend project fodder. I suspect it'll take me a bit longer than the couple of hours they reckon.

I assume it has to be aluminum since the weight is going to be a big factor in the efficiency, no ?

well aluminum wont rust.

I think the author happens to live near a printing plant or something that commonly tosses these in the trash or sells them for peanuts once they're worn out. You can substitute any large sturdy sheets of free aluminum that you happen to have nearby, as people do.

Yeah I might update that with a little more info.

Essentially it's just a matter of ringing round all the offset printing companies in your area til you find one that will sell you their used plates. I've only so far not managed to find them in the deep Australian outback, and the high Himalayas.

Otherwise tho any ~0.3mm aluminium sheet will do. Weight and oxidisation are certainly issues, but mostly it's that the alu is easy to bend and cut by hand, and is more than strong enough to withstand high winds.

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