Thinking of installing a wind turbine at your house, and interested in getting the most bang for your buck? There are several things to consider, and it will probably be a little more complicated than installing solar panels. OK, depending on your particular situation, it may be considerably more complicated than installing solar panels.
Fortunately, there is a great deal of information available to help you through the process. Wind Power Basics (New Society Publishers) provides a wealth of information to help even a novice develop a clear understanding of wind energy and wind turbines.
Among the primary topics covered in the book:
- Wind turbine siting (You need to put it where the strongest, smoothest winds typically occur, and away from major wind obstacles).
- Wind turbine tower height considerations.
- Tall wind turbine tower economics (Hint: You won’t hear people say that they wish they’d bought a shorter tower. But also be advised local zoning codes may strictly limit tower height in many urban and suburban areas).
For more information, please see the article in Mother Earth News.
Mark H. Witte is a strong proponent for energy efficiency and renewable energy, and believes individuals should have more control over how the energy for their homes is produced.
I built a battery powered tesla coil myself. One of the hardest parts of working with batteries is their life span. The primary circuit of a tesla coil draws a LOT of current. Batteries are rated in amp-hours, meaning the number of hours they can go if the load is drawing 1 Amp of current. A good battery has about 4-6 amp hours. However, a tesla coil absolutely has to draw more current than 1 amp in order to get anywhere near a respectable current going through the primary current (remember that the primary coil has high current, and the secondary has high voltage). So the batteries will die very quickly. I built my coil using lantern batteries, 2 of them in series (12V), running through a pulse circuit and a car ignition coil to produce high voltage. The ignition coil will output somewhere around a 1-inch spark at a very high frequency. The ignition coil method (which is by far, the most efficient tesla coil you can make with a limited power supply like batteries) works very well. I have used the ignition coil tesla coil method run plasma globes, make Kirlian photos, etc. This is the way that it works:An ignition coil requires a pulsed AC signal in order to continuously output a spark like a tesla coil. Batteries are DC, so you need to find a way to pulse the DC signal. Specifically, you need to make a square wave(a square wave is where it goes on-off-on-off thousands of times per second). There are two ways to do this:1. Use a relay wired as and electromechanical buzzer. It sounds very diificult, but it is not. It is $2.00 worth of parts and can be assembled without soldering in less than 5 minutes. This way is the most similar way to the one that Tesla used. 2. Make an integrated circuit. There are a lot of people out there on the web who have used transistors to develop a complicated circuit that will pulse a 555 timer to drive an ignition coil. If you are good at soldering and circuitry, this way probably makes a nicer spark. I answer a lot of tesla coil and Nikola Tesla questions, so you might want to browse thru my profile for more info.
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