Merval.Org

For sometime now, I have been looking at ways of generating electricity on a small scale, for things such as camping, or if there is a power outage and you need to keep something powered on or a battery charged up. I’ve looked Wind Power Generators and recently found a neat one that uses rare earth magnets and generates 1000w of power. I’ve even looked at Solar Panels.

I think my first project will be a wind turbine. Not the 1000w one at first, because those magnets can get REALLY expensive.  But the only thing I want to look at is, making the unit easily portable and possibly with adjustable height. The key problem with adjusting height is the force the wind will be putting on the turbine during wind gusts, the adjustable height may snap the whole rig in half.

My biggest issue may be building the charging unit, I am horrible at reading schematics, and would need to build a unit that will both charge a battery and then once the battery has a full charge stop sending a charge, and possibly have a second output linked to another battery.

I will want to look into the option of having multiple inputs, so if I have two turbines or a turbine and a solar panel (or two of anything really), I can charge with both without needing a second charging unit and battery.

Bad part is, since my plate is already pretty full, this whole idea may take a back seat for awhile, which may be a good thing since I will need time to learn how to read and understand schematics.  If you can assist me in this quest, please contact me dwalker@merval.org

Thanks for reading!