DIY wind turbine mount

One of our customers recently purchased a wind turbine for his boat, to provide eco friendly electricity on the move. After shelling out for the expensive turbine, he realised that the turbine did not come with a mounting kit; looking up on the web you quickly discover that a standard marine environment wind turbine mounting kit can cost you in excess of £200+, so my customer decided to build one himself!

After doing some research on the net, he stumbled across the Kee Lite aluminium fittings range. If you compare corrosion resistant properties of marine grade (6082) aluminium over even those of stainless steel, you can easily see why he thought that Kee Lite aluminium fittings were ideal for a wind turbine mounting kit.

Design

Neil created a 2.5m mounting mast and 2no 2m support struts using aluminium fittings. He simply trimmed the tube down to the desired size and used fixing bolts to connect the LM58 fittings to the structure.

He then used LM50 aluminium fittings to create the bracket to support the mast with the support struts, LM58 fittings to mount the system to the structure/vessel and LF50 fittings to act as the connectors.

All parts are marine grade aluminium so are suitable for use on boats, offshore platforms or in high corrosive environments.

Please note that we do not supply the bolts to connect the LM50, LF50 and LM58's.

Neil recommends:

Use UNF 7/16 stainless bolts to bolt the fittings together, it is the closest to the 11mm holes in the LF50-8 female swivel sockets. The size of the upright tube is dependent on the type of generator. Most seem to fit either internally or externally on standard scaffold tubing, ie the OD 48.3. The OD must not exceed 48.5mm to avoid blade strike in high winds."