Let’s get to your own wind turbine blade design first. Wind turbine blade design could be difficult if you didn’t have a good set of directions to follow. That is where we started with our own wind blade designing.
Designing wind turbine blades for your home wind power generator was first perfected by Marcellus Jacobs of the Jacobs Wind Machine Company back in the 1930’s. Yes, others claim to have been first, but Mr. Jacobs made it work for vast numbers of homes across North America and the World.
His research lead to today’s vastly improved wind turbine blade design. Let’s get to designing your own blades. Here is where to start.
What will you need? · An estimate of the blade diameter you want to achieve · Simple wood working tools, planes, saws etc · Detailed plans including your wind turbine blade design you wish to use
PVC Blades- Wind Turbine Blade Design
We have made smaller machines out of PVC, the blades that is. Here is a short video to show you a nice machine.
You should only use PVC up to 5 foot blade diameter or so. This could in effect produce 500 watts of power which is a good start for your home. They are cut from the pipe on kind of an angle; you will see from the plans just how easy it is. We are usually able to make a set of 3, which is the recommended number of blades because they are balanced in about an hour.
Wooden Blades- Wind Turbine Blade Design
Although PVC seems strong we have had much better luck using wooden blades for machines of 8 foot diameter or better.
Using wood like the photos show will improve your chances of having your machine run smoothly with less maintenance. It is stronger and more resilient.
Mr. Jacobs used spruce for his early machines which he sold across the world, but any hardwood with straight clear grain will work.
We have had very good luck making wind turbine blades out of Eastern Cedar that we cut ourselves.
We can salvage logs that others wouldn’t be able to use with our chainsaw mill.
It’s not very complicated really, just follow the plans carefully and you won’t have a problem. Watch this short video of completed wooden blades before they are set up.
Pretty interesting isn’t it? Remember, there should be no knots in the wood you use. That makes it much stronger.
We have made PVC blades up to 6 feet in diameter, which makes each blade 3 feet long, as we said in about an hour. Wooden blades like the ones shown on the left take more like 8 hours to complete. The choice is up to you.
In a recent storm we lost one of our PVC blades while the wooden blades remained untouched. It seems that after a few years the blades get brittle even though we apply UV coating every year.
Isn’t it time you got started building your own wind generator. Just follow the link for more information on how to build a homemade wind generator of your own. Wind Turbine Blade Design is not that difficult as we mentioned earlier. If you are building a wind farm you might want to sink a lot of time into research and development, but to run your home a simple design using easily managed materials that is easy to build certainly is a better choice. Enjoy your new renewable energy source.
We have made PVC blades up to 6 feet in diameter, which makes each blade 3 feet long, as we said in about an hour. Wooden blades like the ones shown on the left take more like 8 hours to complete. The choice is up to you.
