How to Build a Wind Turbine at Home

With wind turbines beginning to dot the landscape across the U.S. now, it is becoming increasingly clear that this free energy source is no passing fad. Learning how to build a wind turbine for your home can give you the edge on future electricity price increases.

As supplies of fossil fuels dwindle, electricity costs produced by traditional power plants are going through the roof. As more and more countries, like China, are becoming “Americanized”, this trend will continue until prices become simply unaffordable.

If you learn how to build a wind turbine, either from a pre-fab kit, or by just going to a hardware store, buying the materials, and making it from scratch, you will be factoring yourself out of the energy crisis – at least as far as your home goes.

Building a windmill for your home is really not that difficult if you have some mechanical aptitude. There are number of plans available depending on the size of the unit you need to power your house.

Before lighting out to buy materials though, you have a couple items of homework to make sure you have done first:

1. Get to know YOUR wind.

Is the wind strong enough in my area to generate power? So, “your wind” is different based on where you live and the terrain and obstructions near your home.

While there are wind maps made available by the government, they don’t tell you about your specific location – just your area of the country. You still have to assess locally and that is best done with an anemometer. An anemometer is a small device that measures and records the speed and frequency of the wind. They only cost $25 – $50 and can be purchased at Amazon.

Use the anemometer to record the wind and note how regular the patterns are. If you build a wind turbine you must make sure you have the approximate 9 mph needed to get most blades to turn at least the majority of the day to make enough power to create energy.

2. Get to know YOUR community.

Will my local community allow me to build a wind turbine on my property?

There are many communities and neighborhood associations that will not allow windmills. The reason is, they are responsible for looking out for property values and windmills are seen as an eyesore by many.

So, check with your neighborhood association and their protective covenants before you act. If you don’t live in a neighborhood with covenants, check with your local town or county government and ask if there are any provisions in the local code that would keep you from building a wind turbine on your property.

If both those coasts are clear, you are ready to go!

There are 2 avenues you can follow to get your wind turbine built and installed:

1. Buy a pre-made kit

2. Buy a set of plans and build the turbine from scratch

There are a number of kits out there from well-regarded companies like, WindEnergy7, Bergey, and Windspot. The primary argument about going this route is cost – pre-fab kit units are simple to put together but you pay for that convenience, with a price of $6,000 – $15,000.

Plans needed to build the wind turbine from scratch of course cost a lot less. The hassle is having to go on a scavenger hunt to get all the parts. Then, you have to take the time to cut and assemble.

Either way you go, if you’ve done the 2 items above and build a wind turbine for your home, you cannot help but succeed. Your costs of energy will go down quickly and, when your first costs are repaid by the project, you will have FREE energy forever.

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