Belize bicycle wheel windmill battery 12 v charger.

*** handling wind gusts with wind furling and a rubber band
** In wind gusts you need to compensate with tilt back, to reduce the effect and maintain steady rpm. This is called FURLING. In this case it is two hinges on a wood mounting block and a rubber band, to even out the wind surges.
** mounting photo of bicycle windmill
** This has been touted as the best model for charging batteries. Cheap versus results being the criteria. Made from rear bicycle wheels and a treadmill d.c. cast off motor.

The big thing with cheap bicycle wheel windmill chargers, to charge one or more 12 volt deep cycle batteries for a storage bank of electricity and convert through an inverter into 120 a.c. 60 cycle operation is basically cost and performance, verus elegance and spending a lot of money. You need a wind vane, a furling system to stop it, a pulley to run the motor, you can make the tower out of anything. They say 3 feet wind vanes are best for home use, without getting into sophisticated building problems. Rough and ready is what I want. Finding parts in the rural boondocks of Belize, Central America is always a problem. Have to scrounge around. I see on the internet that people build windmills, using pvc pipe slices ( very thin width they recommend for low rpm startup ), sheet metal vanes, hooked on with wire and nails and so forth. Right down my alley the rough and ready stuff. Pulleys might be a problem around here though. We don't have that kind of hardware stores here.
I just got into building a computer room that requires data downloads, and the local Belize Electricity Ltd. burned out my computer with current surge. Had to replace my computer power supply and motherboard with some junk stuff. Even so it cost me and hurt my pocket book. BEL the electric company often has brownouts, days off for six hours or more without electricity and this is no way to run my business relying on computers and internet hookup. ( I can only get slow Verizon wireless, dial up from our local SMART company at 115 kbps. ) I have enough problems as it is, but data feed is critical and it takes an hour at these slow internet speeds ( nothing else available ) to reload data feeds and web pages from Chicago, USA CBOE trading pits. So I am building a battery computer run operation, so I don't get my data stuff webpages dumped, when BEL cuts the juice. Currently charging from household power into a battery through an automobile charger. Got two computers now. One will run off the battery and inverter all the time, and I was looking at a windmill to do the charging. I'm told I need a regulator with the windmill. Fancy is not the question, performance and COST is certainly paramount. I live in the foothills of the Belize Alps on the edge of a town called Santa Elena. Very rural with a couple of nice scenic valleys. Anyway after going through the internet, decided on bicycle wheel windmills. Will see what comes of this idea, and if I can even find a d.c. motor to use, second hand. Here are some of the better stories and photos I found for your perusal. Tell you later if this works!