Windmill Blades - And From What They Are Made

Decades ago if you drove by a field and happened to see a windmill spinning in the wind, chances are the blades were made of wood. With new inventions and better technology today, wood is still used as material for turbine blades. The design is different however. And a lighter wood material is used, in order to carve the blade and faster speed rotation.
By knowing and understanding the different types of blades, and how they improve or decrease the effectiveness of a wind turbine, you can purchase this alternate energy source with confidence. Knowing it will meet your needs.

The most recent blade design is made of fiber-glass and epoxy resin. Although this blade is in its first stages and not yet marketed, what makes it unique is its curvature like tip. This allows it to catch low wind speeds and would be considered a good design for a wind turbine used in the Midwest.

Some turbine blades have actually been made with the raw material made for PVC piping. In strong lengthy winds they have been found to break, but inexpensive to replace.

Researchers have done experiments with several different materials for turbine blades. Weight, wind resistance, durability, speed rotation, sound output, and of course cost are evaluated. Glass has never been used in experiments although plexi-glass was tested. It failed due to not being able to withstand long periods of wind, and the sound output was ineffective.

Many materials have been tested poly foam and aluminum, to name a few more and their performance again was different. They were also found less effective.The turbine blade made of carbon fiber is light weight, and has a razor sharp edge which allows it to literally cut through the wind and makes it virtually silent. This is the material preferred and used in most wind turbine machines sold today.

Another factor evaluated was how many blades would be placed on a turbine windmill. Three blades almost instantly became the most popular. More blades seemed to increase noise and slow down the actual rotation of the turbine's propeller formation. After more research was done the concept of using more than three blades was no longer a factor.

The bigger commercialized wind turbines were more effective in putting out the expected wattage than one with six blades. This was proof that three blades were better. These turbines are as big as two football fields or more in size.

The smaller wind turbines for home use also remained with the propeller style and three blades as a result of its performance, producing the correct type of wattage expected. Carbon fiber blades in the right formation were the inventive solution for the vertical windmill and the wind turbines of today. The wind turbine blades as a whole are simply part of their design, an important part to the quality of performance of the entire wind turbine machine.

How To Make Solar Panels

Learning how to make solar panels was something that we decided to do as soon as we investigated the price of new solar panels. It would literally cost us thousands of dollars to buy enough solar panels to run our off grid home. There had to be a better way to equip our home with solar panels we figured.

Most everything that you can buy from someone you can probably make yourself- why not learn how to make solar panels.

It turned out that it wasn't as difficult as we thought it might be. Solar panels are manufactured in high tech facilities with very expensive equipment but most of that technology goes into the making of the individual cells that make up the solar panels.

If we could find a source of small solar cells that were already manufactured at a reasonable price and perhaps some decent instructions we could definitely make our own solar panels.

What did we need?

· Guide book on how to make solar panels

· Inexpensive solar cells

· 1 sheet of plywood

· Copper wire

· Sheets of glass

We first located a book on the subject so that all of the fine details could be accomplished. It cost us under $20, but the very first solar panels that we made more than paid for it. We figured we saved nearly $400 just on the first solar panel we made.

The guide book contained mostly information on how to install solar panels (which was very helpful too) but along with that was detailed instructions on how to make our own solar panels.

There were pictures and step by step instructions which really helped a lot. We located a source of inexpensive solar cells and we were off to the races.

You first start out with a sheet of plywood and arrange the cells in rows along the sheet of plywood.

You can make any reasonable size that you want, but the cells must maintain spacing that are consistent as outlined in the book. It really is not tat difficult, just a bit time consuming to set up.

The next step is to drill holes in the plywood so wires can be drawn threw and all of the cells connected together. After the wires are secured a backer board is placed over the back of the plywood to seal the wires in.

A small framing piece is placed on the outside of the plywood that is higher than the cells and in this way you can seal the cells with glass. After that step the whole affair begins to look very professional.

It looks like a commercial grade solar panel all because you followed the right steps. A little bit of trim will spruce it up nicely.

How much will you save by learning how to make solar panels? We routinely make our own 100 watt solar panels for around $150, with prices always fluctuating depending on the price of solar cells.

Commercial bought new 100 watt solar panels run in the $500 range or more so you can see you will save a lot of money.