On Wed, 4 Oct 2006 20:05:51 +0100, Mary Fisher wrote:

It's also the cost of R&D. Try making your own - go on!

Plenty of R&D has already been done on DIY wind turbines, and plenty of
plans on the net. Trouble is the effort probably isn't worth it for the
small outputs that you are going to get from an turbine you can construct
at home without specialist kit.

As I see it wind is not really the way to go. To get sensible outputs you
have to have huge devices(*) that on average only generate 1/3 to 1/4 of
their rated output over a year.

In the relative scheme of things as well not just the rotating jumbo jet
on a pole 2MW commercial turbines. Even a small 2kW "domestic" jobbie has
a rotor around 2.5m in diameter on top of pole at least 5m high. And note
that those powers are peak powers not what you'll actualy get most of the
time.

Small turbines with rotors less than 1m in dia generate no more than a
few hundred watts OK for battery charging on a boat when the boat isn't
in use but for a house not worth it. To put this in perspective, a 500W
or so wind turbine couldn't keep a large battery bank charged in the long
term to power 3 Cisco wireless bridges, a router and switch. And this was
on top of a hill with good exposure to strong winds...

--
Cheers
Dave. pam is missing e-mail