For this summer vacation, my friends and I decided to do something for the environment. After a few talks on what we should do, we agreed to make ourselves a wind turbine, as that seemed to be one of the easiest ways of generating energy on ourselves. We thought that making a wind turbine would be, at least, easier than assembling a solar panel or hydroelectric generator.

           The first thing we did was to learn how to actually make a wind turbine. Surprisingly, we found numerous articles and posts on the Internet, with great details. They even guaranteed that the turbines generated a considerable amount of energy, enough for us to use. So after comparing various kinds of turbines and methods of making them, we settled to make a vertical wind turbine out of simple materials.

           The next thing was to get all the materials. We need a lot of coils, magnets for the generator itself, plus quite a lot of plastic for making the propellers of the generator. It took quite a while to buy all of those because some of them, such as coils, were hard to get in large quantities. This also was solved by using the Internet and placing orders online.

           After a week later, we finally started making the turbines. We found out that the making was much more difficult than we had actually imagined. It involved lots of cutting and sawing, plus winding the coils again. However, the most difficult thing was the fact that our wind turbine did not seem to be activate properly, even during test drive.

           So it took quite a long time to solve all the problems and small glitches in our turbine, including winding the coils (again!) so that they were in perfect shape, and adjusting the propellers at the appropriate angle. It actually took longer for us to solve the problems than to make the turbine itself. Thankfully, we somehow got it done.

           All of us were so glad to see the turbine generate a few volts of energy. I leaned once again that generating energy is a really difficult job, and felt that we really should conserve energy.

Below are some pictures of our wind turbine. Although it looks to be in a poor state, it actually generates some electricity.