How to Live Off-Grid Cheaply - Windmill - Part One

jeff-kubitz (70)in #life • 9 years ago (edited)

How to Live Off-Grid Cheaply: The Windmill - Part One

In this article I will lay out how one can design a home solar system and wind system using very inexpensive components which are easy to get and cheap. The frame you see once held three home built windmills and they were D.C.. It cost three hundred dollars for the positive and negative wire from them to the battery box. It was fifty feet.

Electricity is very high cost for people on the grid, while home generation is very inexpensive to do with wind and solar and fairly reliable. The difference between a home off-grid system and one of those systems you lease is an off-grid system does not need any electricity from the grid to operate it. The nice part of a home generation system is that it can be bought with cash and the components, except for batteries usually last a very long time. Generally, if there is something wrong one or more batteries is bad.

I generally go through Missouri Wind and Solar. https://mwands.com and the reason I do that is because Missouri Wind and Solar invents windmills and many other components that are very reliable and inexpensive. They also have many how to videos on how to use just about everything they sell and last of all they are cheap!

I tried generators - twenty-three before I went green. Well, I had windmills both making my own and some I bought. I had the generators because sometimes the wind would not blow and we needed to run our refrigerator.

Generators are expensive because they need both fuel and oil and they need oil changes frequently. They also do not last very long. I have seen generators that run well and do last long such as the Rigid Brand but again, they need fuel and oil. One is surprised just how much fuel and oil running a generator comes to. For four hours a day which is not very much time, it will run to about two gallons for a 2,000 watt generator plus oil. I wish I had never got into generators and started with wind and solar even though they have their problems - no sun and no wind. The reason why is all the money I spent on generators I could have 5,000 watts of solar and one of those $4,000 dollar forklift batteries that last ten or more years for what I paid for generators, fuel, and oil.

I go twelve volt and the reason for this is because if all else fails, I can go to a twenty-four hour truck stop and pick up a new inverter and the inverters they sell can be high watts. An inverter transforms D.C. voltage into A.C. voltage.

Some people will go the route where they by all D.C. appliances but this is very expensive. Not only do the D.C. appliances cost more, they are less readily available for retail purchase and the size of the wires to run D.C. through a house are huge, the cost is huge, and much of the electricity generated can encounter resistance and disappear in heat.

Switching D.C. to A.C. is the cheapest way in both cost of wires and electricity transmission efficiency. You also get to use the existing wiring in your house instead of rewiring the whole house with expensive, huge wires.

So, again, there are two types of current Direct Current (D.C.) which is used in cars, computer, battery operated devices like flashlights and then there is Alternating Current (A.C.) which is used in houses, businesses, industry, and is transmitted over power lines.

These are Walmart deep cycle marine batteries and cost about $60 a piece with an exchange core. If you do not have an exchange core. You can go to a junk yard and usually buy dead batteries for $5.00. Sometimes they will have good batteries for $20.00 they did not have any good batteries yesterday so I went to Walmart.

You are probably asking why go through electricity backwards? Why explain it backwards? The answer is that the most efficient windmills for home power generation are A.C. and they are three phase. Because of this, the wire coming from the windmill to the battery storage can be real small and cheap. You can even use the wire from an extension cord to go from your windmill to your battery box. Missouri Wind and Solar designs and builds their own windmills and they are this type 3 phase A.C. and what that means is that you get three times the electricity generation every time the windmill spins. Their windmills are extremely small and efficient and put out a ton of electricity for the size, if the wind blows. This is a 1600 watt.

The Missouri Wind and Solar Windmills are cheap and designed to go on top of one of those absolutely gigantic windmills that generate 1.2 megawatts and stand 550 feet or 280 meters high to provide power for the internal components of the windmill.

This is not a sales tool for Missouri Wind and Solar but since I have bought their product and it has been through hell and keeps working, I will tell you what sort of storms and conditions it can handle - you decide. The temperature here range between -30 F and 115 F degrees. It is both hot and cold, dusty, dry, and both wet and icy. The wind can exceed one hundred miles an hour sustained for several days. This windmill that I have is about eight years old. The windmills are rated to last 62.5 years but I do not think it will last that long, never the less it has a couple of decades to go and with new parts, very cheap, it might last more than 62.5 years. I has paid for itself so many times over that cost of electricity from it is nearly free about $0.0009 per watt at this stage. Your total outlay on a windmill currently sits at about $800.00. It could be more. It depends upon which model you choose.

For a windmill, to live off-grid, you need these components:

A windmill, permanent magnet, rare earth magnet, neodymium!
A pole to mount it on
Maybe guide wires to hold up the pole
Batteries, at least two preferably four
An inverter
Wiring, extension cord (minimum 14 gauge)and huge D.C. wires for the batteries and to the inverter at least 2/0 stranded.
Conduit for the wire from the windmill to the battery box, and from the battery box to the inverter.
Battery and connection connectors.
Brakes, a three way switch that reverses the current and slows down the windmill in high wind. Can be applied upon each phase individually. I do not have any, yet, after eight years.
Charge Controller (For a windmill, depending on your area a charge controller might be optional. Because my refrigerator uses so much electricity, it is the charge controller for the windmill. The windmill either puts out enough electricity or it doesn't) There are two charge controller each runs about $120.00, they are the cheapest. These charge controllers use a solenoid. After I just bought a new one, they came out with a solid state. It uses half the electricity of the solenoid or less.
Grounding Rods and connectors

This is the switch box for each phase of the windmill, where the break switches would go. Notice I use a triple gang box with three residential 15 amp switches. They last for years and they work because the switches are 15 amp and 120 volts A. C. where as the the windmill almost never exceeds 30 amps at 24 V.A.C. if it does, it is a hurricane category FIVE and you should have taken it down or it will turn cherry red and the coil with go in a puff of smoke!

The only thing that can go wrong with the windmill is the coil and the bearings. The blades are unbreakable but they can be broken. They are $58 for three. I have never bought a new blade though one time a big hawk flew into the windmill and a 1/2" of one blade broke. The hawk did not make it. A new twelve volt coil is about $60.00 bearings are about $150, usually you have to buy a new housing. I have replaced four coils but had I bought brakes, I would never have had to replace even one. The thing to the right of the blue box with the switches is a rectifier. It turns the A.C. of the windmill to D.C. for the batteries.

The windmill does not come with an 1 and 1/2 inch mounting pole. It does not come with a way to secure that pole. It does not come with the wire. It does not come with the connectors for the wire. It does not come with brakes. A nicely mounted brake switch is $60.

That is it.

Choosing your windmill with the right number of blades for you area is a must. I have a nine blade windmill. I should have either an eleven or thirteen bladed windmill with brakes. The more blades you have, the lower the speed at which the windmill turns on. A nine blade is supposed to turn on at 9 mph sometimes it takes awhile because the windmill is not pointing in the direction of the wind. The wind must blow hard enough to turn the windmill in the right direction and then the wind must blow hard enough to start the windmill. I use a twenty foot pole of 1 and 1/2 inch PVC to turn the windmill and start it. I did not need the pole this morning. Usually I do need it. It is why I do not mount my windmill on a pole taller than twenty feet.

Note: Do not mount your windmill to the house like I did for years. Even though it is a perfectly, finely tuned machine, it goes thump, thump, thump when attached to the house and so does the house for as long as the windmill turns. Notice the mount. It increases windmill efficiency when the wind is compressed by hitting the forty-five degree angle of the roof but it not worth it.