Blowin' in the wind: The making of a wind turbine

The answer is indeed blowing in the wind. So what was the question?

The question was: "How can we provide electricity to Box 1 while staying within our budget and off the grid?"

Wind power! BA has been hard at work researching construction methods and needed components for a home-made wind turbine. It's not done yet, but here are some pictures of what we've done so far.

This is a fan motor. It will be the motor that runs the turbine, and it will be attached to a flywheel.
BA got it free at a scrapyard and rewired it himself. 

This is the PVC pipe that will become the blades for the turbine.

This is BA cutting out the turbine blades from the PVC pipe, using a circular saw.

These are the blades. You can't tell from the pic, but there are three of them.
They are slightly curved with notches on the ends.

We'll be doing more work on the windmill over the weekend, so check back for "Blowin' in the wind Part II." If this concept works well to provide electricity for Box 1, we'll repeat the process on the future structures of BaHa Ranch. Alternatives would include buying a manufactured windmill or windmill kit, or using solar power on a larger scale than what we are already using.

We got most of the information on how to do this from How To Build A Wind Turbine, so if you want to try this too, check them out!