Selfsufficientish.com

Just found this online http://www.scribd.com/doc/21559199/How- ... nd-Turbine

its by Hugh Pigott, acknowledged UK expert on small wind and a free download !

note what he says on p40 -

"In a very open location a 20' tower might do. In many cases it will be
necessary to go to 40' [12 m] or 60' [18 m] to reach clean
wind. In the USA, 120' [36 m] are not uncommon."

so don't waste your time with rooftops/urban situations :-)

(btw scribd is a very interesting site - wonder what else is on there)

thanks so much,
my girlfriend wants to build a windgenerator someday.
she is in the US Air Force Reserves.
she is a airplane mechanic,
works on the C-130 (a large 4 prop cargo plane)

Thanks for that - yoinked I love scribd, lots of good stuff - the difficulty is finding it sometimes, there's so much.

Minnesota, that's a great potential source of wind turbine blades!

Thanks very much for the link. That is very useful. We live in a very windy area and a turbine would do very well here even at not much above ground level

We nearly get or heads blown off everytime we go out the door

mamos

dave45 wrote:In a very open location a 20' tower might do. In many cases it will be
necessary to go to 40' [12 m] or 60' [18 m] to reach clean
wind. In the USA, 120' [36 m] are not uncommon.

I should be OK then as mine is a very open location and I have a 40' lattice tiltover tower for it.
Not fitted yet as I'm still accumulating all the necessary bits and pieces, but I hope to get it all working before Christmas.
Can't see it paying for itself in the short term though, unless electricity prices double (which they may well do soon) although our wonderful government have said they are going to introduce a "carbon tax" in the next budget which is next month, whatever that means.

My motivation is not the cost of electricity. I get free electricity as it is. My motivation is self reliance.

If I build a small wind turbine and get it delivering electricity to my batteries i know that whatever happens in the future be it flood, recession or just the occasional power cut I will be able to watch re runs of QI on dave

mamos