| By :
Roger Brown
What this review is about: The Windtura 500 is a pre-fabricated modular home wind turbine that can be installed by the typical home handyman. What I like about it… • Solid construction - made out of steel with a power coat painted surface • Weight is 53 lbs • Small and light enough to be mounted on a roof • Approximately $700 What I don't like about it… • Only charges a battery bank - not intended for integration with your home electric system • Max wind speed 28 mph Deeper dive: Getting a modular, simple wind generator is a really good way to get started making electricity out of the wind. The Windtura 500 is small but powerful - having the potential to deliver 500 Watts of power. Really, the only variables you have to determine yourself are where and how high up you will mount your wind turbine. To accomplish that - and before you go down the road of purchasing ANY home windmill - it is wise to first understand a bit about the specifics of the wind surrounding your home. That takes a little time and research, but the payoff will be in optimizing the power you generate with your wind generator. There are Internet resources, like Wunderground, you can use to learn average wind speed and direction for your city or zipcode. That is interesting information but still a bit too general to help you determine where best to mount the windmill on your property. To understand at that level of detail you should invest in a handheld anemometer. You can buy one at Amazon for under $50. The way to use the anemometer is to first mount the device on a long pole in order to place it high enough in the wind stream to simulate the effect of mounting it on top of a tower. Then, the pole can be mounted where you think your wind turbine might work best on your property. The resulting data you collect will give you and indication what kind of windmill will work best for you and where you should install it. Theoretically, the wind turbine should be mounted at least 30 feet above the highest obstacle that could block or partially obstruct the wind. But, there is usually some tradeoff here. Local permitting restrictions may restrict where you can mount the turbine, so you may not be able to mount it in the optimal location for wind harvesting. Bottom line is, if you have an average wind speed of 9 mph the windmill project will work for you. If you like building things from scratch, there are many plans to be found on the Internet where you can just buy the materials and make a home windmill yourself. But, if you are serious about getting started making your own wind energy, the Windtura 500 is an excellent, low-cost way to get in the free energy business quickly. If you are a reasonably good do-it-yourselfer you won't have any problem at all assembling the kit and mounting the unit where it needs to go.
|
![[Valid RSS feed]](http://www.articleforbacklinks.com/images/icon_Rss.png "XML Feed For RSS"){kind=icon}
Category Rss Feed
Print This Article
Add To Favorites
