Rob, who lives in Slade Point, Mackay, Queensland Australia, has been interrested in RE for as long as I've know him, and he recently bought a 12v 300 watt Chinese windmill from Electus. As expected, those blades were a bit on the noisy side so Rob made the modification to reduce the noise as shown here. He didn't reshape the blades, only added the length of cord to the back of the blades, and says this made a big difference to the noise. The windmill is now virtually silent, just as well as Rob lives in your typical suburban street with close neighbors.

Robs battery bank consists of several large SLA batteries from old UPS's. The batteries are on their last legs, but will do for now. To complement the windmill Rob has a couple of solar panels giving a total of approx 80 watts.

Currently the system is powering a few LED lights in the garage/rompas room, but Rob has plans to expand the system with more battery capacity and more lights. The batteries are fully charged by 10am, so a lot of the available wind/solar power is wasted

The roof mounted windmill.

You can just make out the cord attached to the back of the blades in this photo.

A couple of 2nd hand solar panels supply several amps when the sun is shining.