Well, to make a long story short, creating my own small off grid wind power system was far easier than I expected it to be. I was expecting a bunch of pain and no small amount of misery. It can’t be easy to make your own wind power turbine, right?

Click here if you’re curious and just want to see the solution I used, or stick around and read my story!

In any case, my friend showed me the package he bought to build his own small wind turbines.  He walked me through the construction process and it seemed pretty straight forward.  Colin showed me pictures from his project and showed me the wiring he put in place.  We talked a bit about the logistics and then I went home to see about buying plans for myself.

I checked out the website and was pretty excited about what I found.  This stuff was quite affordable too!  The big kicker for me was that this package came with both diy wind generator plans AND diy solar panel plans.  I could knock both energy sources off my list at the same time as I had my doubts about the used solar panels I had in place!

Click here to see the solution to my alternative energy problems!

I whipped out my debit card and bought the plans.  I spent the whole night watching the construction videos and getting an idea of what I’d be doing.  I took the list of parts I’d need and went shopping.  I had a hard time finding a couple things locally but that wasn’t anything the Internet couldn’t fix!

Pretty soon I had all the parts for my wind generator on hand and I started construction.  For the most part it was easier than I expected, though I have to admit I had to drop Colin a call once to get clarification on something.  But boy was it worth it.  I was so excited when I had the generator done!

Erecting the pole was fun to be sure, but with a couple ropes and using a truck to pull things into the right spot, it was up in a jiffy.  The moment of truth was here.  It was time to test the power generated by my new wind turbine.

It Worked!  I was actually getting about 15% more energy than I expected to from the turbines.  I’m psyched.  While I have some second hand solar panels already installed, I think I’ll be trying my hand at making a set of solar power panels using the plans that came with my wind turbine plans.

You probably saw the picture before, but I’ll show you a shot of my place again.  Small off grid wind power was achievable for me, so it’s definitely something you can do.  If I can, you can!

Click here to see the official website for the diy wind power and solar power plans.

It sounds much more complicated than it was. First, I had to decide what alternative energy system to use. Solar was an option for part of the time but there isn’t a ton of sun. I did some math and figured that solar panels would provide about 25% of my energy needs.

Due to some unique geological formations, wind power in my area was a realistic possibility. Average wind speeds were about 12 mph, and my home site was far enough out of the woods that a wind turbine would be able to work without interference from the trees.

I priced out some of the basic solutions from commercial providers and quickly found out that this wasn’t really an economical way to go. I could spend a fortune and get a custom built wind generator system but I didn’t have that kind of money to spend.

I went looking for other options. I looked at used wind power turbines but they were too unreliable. I found a great barely used system in the classifieds but it was sold before I could get to it. I didn’t know what to do.

Then I ran into an old friend of mine who shared my passion for green technologies and alternate energy and he told me that he’d bought a package that let him build his own small off grid wind power system and that it even had plans for DIY solar panels as well!

I was sold. The last thing I wanted to do was go see what he’d put together. I packed up the car, picked up my sons, and headed for a visit!

Click here to see the package that Colin bought that solved my alternative energy problems too!

So here’s some basic concepts about wind power.  I had to learn all of these things on my own, so hopefully this little tutorial will help you bypass that learning curve.

Wind turbines are basically a fancy windmill that generate power sort of like an automobile alternator.  The wind blows against the turbine blades, spins the fan which in turn generates electricity.

Wind power generators come in all sizes.  The kind I was interested in was of course a smaller home wind mill.  I’m sure you’ve seen the pictures on the news with the big time wind farms, and these are similar, just on a smaller scale.

Of course this only works if the wind is blowing!  Every turbine has the concept of a cut-in speed which is basically the minimum speed the wind has to blow in order for any power to be generated.

Since the wind isn’t always blowing, we need to augment our wind power system with a battery based storage system.  This isn’t required if you’re on-grid but since my place is off-grid I have to store power for the times the wind isn’t blowing.

The last thing you need to keep in mind is the average wind speed at your place.  Most experts say you need to have about 10mph average speeds at minimum for a wind power generator to be efficient.  But if you combine different alternative energy systems together then you can get by with less.

Hopefully this little explanation of wind power helps you with some of the basics!

Click here to get the ultimate diy wind power package and learn more about alternative energy and conservation!

Let’s get it out of the way … I love my small off grid wind power setup at my new place! Before I get started, my name is Marcus and I’m an alternative energy fanatic. I was tired of living in the suburbs and found myself an old homestead out in the boonies that I could call my own.

After a long search for just the right location I found a nice old farm that was close to woods so I could enjoy the wildlife but also not too close to rule out efficient alternative power generation. This place didn’t have grid power and I definitely didn’t want to install it. I wanted to be off grid.

There was an existing farmhouse on the land that my sons and I carefully dismantled. Much of the building materials were still in good shape though a bit aged. I definitely wanted to recycle as much of the old farmhouse as possible and use it in the construction of the new home. They don’t make things like they used to!

It took a while to get the old place torn down and the building site rehabilitated and ready to start building. And I mean a while … it took two years! We could have done it faster if we hired the job out, but I’m definitely a do it yourself guy, and there was no way I was going to let a bulldozer destroy the materials I was going to reuse.

During the process my sons and I discussed various power options and we settled on a combination plan of solar panels and a small wind turbine or two as well. A friend of mine had some extra panels from a home remodel he did back in the city, so all we had to do was figure out where to find a good wind power generator for the new place. That story is what I wrote this site for!

My son James is a pretty good amateur photographer and he took a nice picture of the place a year or so after it was done. I love this shot, and you can see the wind power turbine we installed.  I am particularly proud of how you can tell that we reused so much material from the old house.  It gives the place so much character!

It really wasn’t all that hard to make our own small off grid wind power system, and I kept good notes while we did it and I’ll share them with you here!

Click here to skip the rest of the story and see the alternative energy package that changed my life.