These are projects that basically can be done in about an hour depending on your skill level.  Most of what is here can be done with basic hand tools.   The first of this series is going to be the wind turbine blade sets.  As shown below the frame structure is very basic and is covered in poly fabric used in aircraft construction.  The actual name for this procedure is "stits" covering.   The fabric is glued into place on the frame work then simply shrunk to fit and it gets extremely tight when completed.

The above blade was built in under 20 minutes using the "tube and wire" method.  That's from cutting materials to the blue assembly. It will still need paint but all 3 blades can be built in about an hour.  The blade will follow a twist from 2 degrees at the tip down to 23 degrees at the tip.  Its set to run at a TSR of around 6 and is a total of 5ft in diameter.  Other sets can be made of any length up to around 12 feet using this method and properly calculated components for stress loading.  These will withstand winds in excess of 70 mph.

more later

Another quick project for experimenting or fun for the kids to experiment with...  These are flat plate turbines.  Related to the Savinous but with less detail and considerably easier to build.

As you can see from the above diagrams, there is basically nothing to them.  Their power output is fairly low similar to the Savinous but do a very nice job.  They will spin in winds you can hardly feel. Below is a picture of one I built from Lexan and plywood.  Its quite small and does no real work but spins all the time.... fun to watch...  It would be quite simple to add a small low voltage alternator and power some LED's for driveway lights or what ever.  I plan to experiment with that in mind...