Wind Generator - Ceiling Fan Turn Into Wind Mill

"GOD created the world & the rest was made in China!"- anonymous

Do you know a ceiling fan that is so cheap?...if you turn it on,

it starts crumbling or shaking like it was going to explode!

That ceiling fan is definitely made in china.

It has no control circuit inside and so dangerous to use,

it can burn you house if you left if turn on for a long time. To prevent the risk of danger of using it,

let's make it work on a different way.

I'm not new on generators and motors.

When i was a child I've been so interested to this matter. Here in my place in the Philippines,

We always having an electricity black out, it's going on and off when there's a strong wind.

That motivate me to dreamed of making my own electric generator for our home.

But due to my lack of knowledge(because I'm just a child then) I didn't finished any of my dream electric generator.

My uncle had one of this ceiling fan but it's wings are broken. I asked him to give it to me instead of throwing it to the junk.

I'm curios. I spin the fan and got electric shocked!

I discovered that it can produce

AC(Alternating Current) current when spinning.

I reversed engineer it and I figure it out.

It has a set of magnets around the magnetic wire

(coil), the magnet's setting was alternating poles

facing the coil, that's why it produces AC current.

What a great discovery?! L o L :D

OK. Here's how I turn it into a Windmill Electric Generator!

The tools and materials you need to this project are:

1. Soldering iron/ soldering wire.

2. Cutter

3. Some wire.

4. Electrical tape.

5. Some basic electrical knowledge :)

6. The cheap ceiling fan

7. Cheap re-chargeable flash light(optional)(china made)

Note, I will now call the ceiling fan as "fan" ;-)

Here's how I make it turn into a wind mill.

First. I make the wing of the fan. I don't have a PVC pipe as most people out there in the internet use a

PVC pipe as the wing of the windmill. On this project  I used a big thin bamboo from the backyard.

I tend to make the wing more thin  and lite weight for the fan to hold it easily.

I used a flattened PVC pipe and screw to mount the wing into the PVC. Refer to the pictures below.

Before we mount the wings, we're gonna work on the electronics and parts first.

Now, cut the plug of the fan and peel the outer rubber of the wire,

revealing the copper wire inside. We have now an access to the wire where we can

connect the charger(a.k.a charge controller) of our windmill.

We don't need to change anything inside of the fan because it was already

a wind mill generator just disguising as a fan! hehehe.

Remove this part of the fan.

The electronics. Instead of buying expensive charge controller, I use this simple circuit.

I have a broken re-chargeable flashlight(actually its made in china again). We will use the the charger circuit as the charge controller.

 Remember where the Input and Output comes from the circuit board.
Solder the the wires from the fan. Also solder two wire for the output.

I assemble a case out of a rubber sheet for the battery and the controller to make it safe.
I also put a switch to turn the charger on and off.
Figure out the polarity by using a multitester while spinning the fan.

I put a high capacity 3.6 v Ni-cad battery from an old laptop battery pack.

The battery Inside the case is fix there. So I connect wires to the
positive and negative of the battery and put a usb port as the output where we
can connect a load. Most likely, I use the battery to my night light in my room.

This is the finished case, I make

additional output connection of the

charger.

I used bamboo for the body and plywood for the tail.
We can now put the wings and it's ready to fly! :D

The magnetic wire inside is so thin that's why it produces high voltage but low current.
You can modify it. Replace it with thicker magnetic wire
to increase the current production.

Sorry for my English, I've try my best. :-)