An article from Ian at Home Power Magazine: This article is for people who know absolutely nothing about wind power. It is a good start (9th grade level reading), but it won't really help you much if you intend to build a system yourself, the information isn't detailed or even accurate, but the pictures are really neat and some of the text is good to know. Why isn't it 100% accurate? We have asked Ian at Home Power to run 'hands-on' classes in his magazine, even offered to write them and as of yet, while there is a lot of good information in Home Power, it isn't really geared towards the do-it-yourself wind gen person. It is mostly for solar panel people and that is a shame. And as usual, (sorry) we do not agree with several points this author makes, but there is some good info too. Contrary to what Ian says, wind power is not more expensive than solar unless you bought the wrong system. Ask any installer who does both or for a very accurate over-all cost, talk to a home owner who has explored this and done both with their own two hands. Ask Sriannie in the South American Jungle - wind power is cheap and his rigs are huge. Wind power can be 1/20th the price of solar panels if you build the gear yourself...period...and if you use equipment that is over-sized and robust, it will last a lifetime with less than an hour of maintenance per year. Wind power is not hard to maintain. Cleaning solar panels takes more time per year than wind turbine maintenance. Battery-less systems are the worst thing you can do and Ian recommends deep-cycle batteries-also the worst thing you can buy. Use either 2 volt heavy-duty forklift batteries or 6 volt golf-cart batteries. Deep cycle batteries, such as are used in RVs are cheaper, with thinner plates and they don't last. We were surprised Ian didn't recognize that fact. Battery-less systems are dangerous, but Ian recommends them. Hmmmm...ok, imagine having a blackout and having no power but your wind gen is spinning like mad in the storm. Would you be upset? Ian says 'Don't buy a cheap system.' and that is wrong and misleading. You should buy the cheapest system with the heaviest duty parts you can for maximum durability, long life and low maintenance. That is why the folks at this website prefer to pick our components carefully, get oversized gear whenever possible, and spend 1/5th the price of 'expensive' kits. We end up with a system that can take heavy punishment and keep on working. Other systems have to shut down early to protect themselves, whereas a good strong design enjoy stormy weather and soaks up all that power. It is just a different capability and it costs less to build it strong than to buy from a kit and get what someone else thought 'would work ok' for you. We don't care if you 'buy gear' from us; we just want you to unplug; we are teachers, not sales people. Belowe is a graph showing the difference between our output method (GREEN) and a kit gen (blue and red). Notice their output tapers off when winds are getting strong - NASA Jerry and the rest of us love it when winds are strong. Expensive kits with undersized gens don't and shut down to protect themselves. Another example is the Bergy 8.5 foot blade which makes almsot 700 watts in 25 mph of wind. It is a hollow metal blade and stalls at about that point and power tapers off or the unit is shutting down to protect itself. Our 7 foot blade (smaller than the Bergey 8.5) makes nearly 1000 watts at 25 mph or 50 percent more power (see graph below) and doesn't start to stall (make noise) and lose power until winds are much higher. Which system is stronger, lasts longer, makes more power? With all this in mind, a smart home owner reads everything and if they want to learn to build very tough systems, follows a step-by-step guide that deploys alternative energy so that: It doesn't impact their wallet It slashes their utility bills to zero and it's done in gradual, affordable steps with equipment that will last a lifetime. That is our method, taught to KCK and the WindGenZen staff by old NASA Jerry who has to depend on this design method for his life at sea in the nastiest environment on Earth. Here is the Home Power Magazine method. There is a lot of good information in here and the pictures are really really pretty. Some of it is inaccurate and will scare people away...sorry. But read it and learn and if you like Ian's style, subscribe to the magazine - there are usually a lot of good articles in there every year on other topics...just not large wind power systems from scratch (whaaaaaaa!) It is true that not everyone who claims to be a 'Wind Power' expert really understands or appreciates a man in a garage building a tough, powerful, well-designed-home-built system...it isn't that much work, but picking the right components is important - as Teddy the steel-boat sailor/welder says 'Too big never broke.' and we like that idea alot. Below are a few wiring diagrams KCK provides for home owners that are a little more elaborate and practical than the drawings in the article above, bot if you are new, you should read both. More elaborate drawings include: Simple block diagram circuits for hybrid systems. Battery based with gride tie system. Battery based with grid tie and generator system. High Voltage nonbattery system. High Voltage nonbattery with generator system.