anyone use solar or wind to power their coop?

[Rare Feathers Farm]

I'm thinking about getting a small wind turbine installed on my coop to power at least one heat lamp. There is electricity down at the coop, but at this point, I have to run an electrical extension cord about 15-20ft into the coop but we frequently lose power in the spring/winter/fall and because we only have one breaker down there right now, it trips when we have the horse fence, tank de-icer for the watering trough (in winter) and a heat lamp for my coop...so with this added solar or wind turbine I'm hoping to be able to power at least one outlet....

 

[RendonRoo]

I want to do the same but i'm finding that the expence is still prohibative. You would have to have several batteries to store that much power. Good Luck and let us know if you do it.

 

[patandchickens]

It is surprisingly expensive to set up a system that will reliably power a heat lamp, especially if you want it 24 hrs a day. Remember you need not only the solar panels (or turbine - and a turbine needs the thingamajig that disengages it if the wind gets too windy, which is usually priced separately), you ALSO need some good-sized deep cycle batteries and a charge controller and possibly an inverter.

It might be more worthwhile to put the money, and it will be considerable, into improving your wiring (increase capacity of circuit and run a real electric line to coop) and/or making the coop so that it does not *need* a heat lamp so much. Even for brooding chicks, which do sort of need a heat source, you can set things up so they don't need *much* of a heat source (warm building or portion thereof, and insulated hover brooder with low wattage bulb)

Good luck,

Pat

 

[Monk]

I was thinking about building my own wind mill from recycled materials. It may take some time, but savings could be significant if you can find a few key parts.

 

[kingmt]

It depends on the parts used. If you buy retail windmills & other gadgets then it is very expensive but if you go junking or as I like to call it yard shopping. You can find most of the parts free. A small Inverter around 1500W is more then enough to power a 250w lamp & you could probably get by with a 500w. You can find a old generator or even a lot of electric motors when turned by something else become generators(just add diode). Build your propeller & you should be good to go. I don't know what thingamajing is unless they just mean a voltage regulator which is easy to build or buy for $5 from a junk yard.

I wish I had the wind to use a windmill here. I have thought about solar & Peltier modules which would be good to use in your brooder to reclaim some of the energy being used.

You might even think of adding solar to the windmill system for a faster charge if your not getting enough to last the night. For batteries you need those ones used for deer feeders. You can pick these up for a few dollars after season or just order a bunch from China.

If you had property on the river would be a lot of free power.

 

[BantyBoy]

here in warmer climates, solar vent fans for attics work great to circulate air out of the coop.

 

[Cowboy Joe]

Link to one of the better homebrewed windmills, at least IMO:

http://www.mdpub.com/Wind_Turbine/index.html


Lots of useful information too.

 

[River Lizard]

Isn't it sad that they mark up wind power so it's not affordable? Seems if they'd drop the price, many people would go to that power source but I guess wind power steps on the toes of powerful corp people.

 

[Rare Feathers Farm]

Well, I emailed a local solar/wind installer and he didn't even give me a quote. His reply was that for what I want, it would be cheaper & easier to run electricity into the coop & give it it's own box. Otherwise, he said thousands of dollars for one wind turbine. Sighs.