This article is to give one a basic outline on how to build a wind turbine at home.

There are some very basic parts and some more difficult ones involved in such a system.

The fairly easy parts are the blades, the tower and the motor. Some people will endeavor to make their own DC motor, but for the sake of sanity, and because it won’t cost you any less to just buy a used one, we’ll stick to purchasing.

Jump on EBay or Craigslist or whatever place to buy used things catches your eye that day. Maybe your uncle owns a scrap yard or maybe you are a DC motor dealer yourself. Either way, obtain a permanent magnet DC motor that is rated for high DC voltage/high current at a low rpm. You want it to produce at least 12 volts DC at an rpm attainable by your wind turbine, say 300 rpm. You should be able to find one for less than $100 if you shop around.

If you still want to know how to build a wind turbine at home, head on over to your local home supplies store. You’re going to want to pick up a 24 inch long piece of 6-inch PVC pipe, a piece of sheet metal about 12 inches by 10 inches, and a 3 foot piece of 2×4 wood. Keep it cheap! Also, grab a piece of PVC big enough to protect your motor and some clamps to strap it to the 2×4. Any sort of housing will do, maybe even an old mailbox!

Attach the housed motor, shaft end out/wires in, to one end of the 2×4. Screw your piece of sheet metal to the other end. This will act as a tail to keep your turbine facing into the wind.

Now for the blades. This is a bit tricky. Are you sure you’re still curious how to build a wind turbine at home? Jeez, you can’t be stopped!

Cut your 2 ft PVC pipe lengthwise into quarters. Take a 5cm by 5cm rectangle out of one end (this is the end you will bolt to your turbine), and then taper down from the edge of the missing rectangle (5cm in) to the other end, ending your taper one inch above the end corner instead of making a point.

Do this to each quarter of PVC and you have four blades.

Find a hub that will fit your motor’s shaft at a scrap yard, or just take a decent hub of aluminum to a shop and have the desired hole cut. Now drill holes and fit your blades to the hub. Fit the hub to the motor shaft and secure it.

You have now gone almost completely from not knowing how to build a wind turbine at home to being quite capable.

Drill a hole in your 2×4 where your tower/mount will fit. Insure that it is at a point of good balance for the turbine assembly, probably closer to the motor. This is where you will run the wires down to your electrical controller and power system. Whether you have batteries and are off the grid, want to attach your rig to a 100 ft tower, or just mount it on a pipe to the top of your residence, you now know how to build a wind turbine at home. The next step is up to you!

Hello there, stranger. Do you have an hour? One hour?

If so, it’s time for us to sit down and make some homemade solar cells.

You might be thinking that I’m crazy; that solar cells are expensive constructions of silicon created in enormous factories using high temperatures and vacuums.

Here is where we provide an alternative using commonplace materials that you can pick up at your local hardware store. The name of the game is ‘cuprous oxide’, a material that has photoelectric properties.

With it, we can make our own homemade solar cells.

We will need a square foot of copper sheeting. Two small alligator leads, a multimeter that can read down to 10 microamperes, a good electric burner on a stove or otherwise, a large-mouth glass jar or plastic bottle with the top sheared off, sand paper and shears to cut the copper sheet in half.

Trim the sheet to a square the size of whatever burner you’ve come up with. Now wash your hands and the copper thoroughly. There can be no grease or corrosion. Sandpaper the sheet as well, just to be 100% sure.

Place the metal on the burner and crank it to its highest setting. If it goes to 11, do that.

The copper will heat and turn into an iridescent maddening water color. Let it go.

We need it to cook for at least 30 minutes, so that the black crust that forms on top is good and thick.

Now shut it off and leave the copper to cool slowly.

How is this helping us to make homemade solar cells? Be patient!

As the metal cools, the black crust will spring off of the copper and make a mess. Let it go. After 20 minutes, give the copper a light scrubbing under running water to remove any loose bits. Don’t get too crazy; we don’t want to bend or cause any trauma to the copper in any way.

There will be a delicate layer of red cuprous oxide left over.

Here’s where it all comes together. Place your burned red copper sheet as well as the other unburned half into the bottle or jar, gently bent to hug the walls, so that they do NOT touch. Now connect your positive alligator lead from your multimeter to the clean copper plate, and the negative to the burned cuprous oxide one.

Fill a pot or some other container with enough hot tap water to fill your container. Now stir in several tablespoons of salt until it dissolves. Take this solution and pour it into the jar or bottle with your copper plates until it is one inch from the top of the plates. The electrical leads cannot get wet!

Now watch your meter. The amount of electricity generated is miniscule, but move the battery you have crated into the light and watch your power increase!

It would require a houseful of these homemade solar cells to power the house itself, but the experiment and the logic are valuable and a good start towards understanding solar power and alternative energy sources in general.

Are you serious?

Do you really want to cut your electricity bill up to 95%?

If so, Check out now who is best homemade solar cells kit

So you want to know how to build a homemade solar panel?

Using a lot of materials that you may have just sitting in the garage collecting dust, this is actually quite simple. Some steps are tricky, but if you just step back a moment and apply a bit of logic, it all becomes clear.

You’ll need basic woodworking tools, some screws, a strong adhesive, and some wiring and soldering materials. Yes, unfortunately soldering is required, but everyone has that electrical guru friend

The most crucial material to making this work is to get online and find some cheap solar cells online.

As you are not going to be making any silicon-based products in your home any time soon, these basic building blocks will be necessary. Solar cells with minor flaws are just fine and often much cheaper.

You’re going to want to buy enough cells that you can wire them in series to get to about 18V, which is what you need to charge 12V batteries.

In an ideal world, you will also have a bank of 12V batteries (like car batteries) that you are storing your collected energy on, then inverting it to AC for use in your home or otherwise.

Be sure to get solar cells with “tabs” on them, or metal strips hanging from the positive and negative conductors for easy wiring and soldering!

There are a lot of small .5V cells out there, 36 of which, wired in series, produce 18V. It is better to charge batteries with a smaller amperage current, or ‘trickle’ charge, for longevity’s sake, but if you have other plans for the solar panel/panels, be sure to get some that meet your needs.

Anywhere you buy them you should be able to give you detailed specifications, but as a general rule, smaller cells produce less current.

See how much you’re learning? Aren’t you glad you decided to learn how to build a homemade solar panel?

When you receive your solar cells, be gentle. These are not rugged apparatus. They are brittle.

Lay out your 36 cells (or however many it will take to do the job you need done) in a square with as little space between them as possible so that you may solder them together. This is the size of solar panel you will need to build.

Construct a housing for the cells with the following in mind:

1. The panel needs to be weatherproof.

2. There need to be vent holes all around for air pressure equalization and to prevent condensation. The holes must not allow critters/insects in, so block them with insulation or something similar.

3. Leave room for the few wires that will need to be run from the positive terminal of the cells run in series and the negative. These wires will run out of your panel to a connector of some sort where you will connect to your batteries.

4. The whole point is to get as much sun as possible. With that in mind, the housing should not be deep at all, and any trick to allow more sun in or focus the sun is a plus!

And now to bring it all together, the last step, and you will know how to build a homemade solar panel.

Solder the solar cells in series and/or parallel to achieve the desired voltage.

Affix the solar cells, in the original pattern you laid out, to whatever housing you have constructed. Insure the proper wiring is run and secured as well, and seal up your solar panel.

Before sealing it, you may want to hook up a multimeter and verify that you are generating the desired power.

A final note is that you should have a blocking diode between your panel and your batteries, to assure that your panel does not discharge your batteries when not generating power.

You are now qualified to teach others how to build a homemade solar panel, and thereby make the world a cleaner, more efficient place!