You live your life every day fully dependent on energy, mainly gas and electricity. But with the constantly rising costs of these energy sources, you might be wondering how you can cut back on these expenses and make your life a little easier. You likely already know about renewable energy and that it is being used around the world. But how do you take advantage of this without spending a fortune? You might want to consider building a windmill, but do you know how to build a wind generator?

That is a good question. Here are some simple steps to help guide you:

- First, find a suitable place where you can set up a tower. It must be 30 to 40 feet high, and within a 300 to 400 foot radius of open space. With regard to the tower, you can choose between tilt-ups and freestanding designs. Tilt-ups are most common since they are easier to maintain because you don’t have to climb up to clean it, but then free standing towers are taller, which means maximized output for your wind turbine.

- Next up on your list are the materials you are going to use. You can start with a high voltage, low current DC motor that runs at low rpm’s. This is the heart of the unit that will convert the wind into electrical current.

- The blades of your wind turbine are the next things you will concentrate on. Wood, sheet metal, or plastic are all good materials, but PVC pipe is usually the best. If you want to get the most power from your generator, make the blades longer, since this will cover a wider area.

- The next step would be about fixing the hub, that which connects the blades onto the motor. One easy way would be to look for a scrap steel disc with which you can drill holes into and attach to a shaft that would connect the blades.

- After this, the tail and the pivot are now to be put together to keep the apparatus turned to the wind. This can be done by using a square tubing, pipe nipple, flange for the pivot and a scrap metal sheet for the tail.

- One last, important step to cover for your wind generator is the battery. The wind doesn’t always blow, so you need a way to store the converted energy. Try to keep the batteries as close to the generator as you can in order to monitor the charging. Try to get batteries that are highly efficient, yet low maintenance.

You need to look for special batteries called “deep cycle”, because they are rated in amp-hours and have indicators of their charge-discharge cycles. They are best for power system applications such as this.

Once you have learned how to build a wind generator, you will need to place a diode between the generator and batteries. This is to prevent the energy from flowing back into the generator and being wasted. A secondary load to act as a depot for excess energy produced would also be a good idea.

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