A few months ago, I opened my electricity bill and my jaw dropped!  There had to be a cheaper way to power my home.  That was at the height of the oil price.  Whilst the price of oil has dropped back in the recession, it's only a matter of time before it goes back way up again.

It was after opening that bill, that I started to wonder about installing my own wind turbine so that I could tell the utility company to get stuffed! 

When I started to search for home wind turbines, I was shocked by how much they cost to buy and install, anything from several hundred dollars to several thousand dollars!  What I thought was a great idea was turning out to be not such a good idea after all.

Then I stumbled across a site that was all about DIY windmills. It hadn't even crossed my mind until that point that I could possibly make and install my own wind generator.  But apparently, according to what I was reading, it was possible, and not only that, it was very cheap to do as well.

I carried on searching for info on how to make a windmill myself, and was surprised to find a bunch of information on the subject.  One product that kept appearing on a lot of the sites I looked at was "Earth4Energy".

Around 80% of the sites I visited recommended the product.  One after the other repeated what a great product it was and how it made building your own windmill a "breeze" for even the most inexperienced DIY individual.  I decided that the product had to be worth a look, so I took a look at it for myself.

The sales page was pretty compelling.  I was intrigued that it was actually geared up to promote making your own solar panels primarily rather than wind generators.  Being pretty clueless about renewable energy, solar power had not even crossed my mind, I'd just been focused on buying a windmill because I'd seen a few around.

What really caught my attention on the sales page though was the reported costs of building either my own solar panels or homemade windmill.  Apparently I could build either for less than $200!

I took the plunge after reading some of the testimonials on the site, they looked pretty genuine.  I thought I'd give my initial idea of building a windmill a go, and if that was a success I could have a go at building their solar panels as well to use alongside the windmill.

So how did I get on?

Well I really surprised myself!  I managed to build quite a decent windmill using the Earth4Energy guide.  It's step by step instructions were really well presented and were easy to follow.  Once I'd got all the parts together from the local hardware store, and begged a few parts from friends, it only took me just over a day to make.  At the moment, I'm not using it to actually power my home, I'm using it to provide power to my shed as the installation process was simpler and I wanted to see how I got on.

Next I'm going to make another windmill to start providing power to my actual home, and this time, when I make it, I'm going to video me doing it to put on this page for people to see how simple it really is (obviously I won't give all the secrets away as the creators of the product won't be overly impressed!).

I'm also going to give the solar panels a go as well, as the tutorial videos look just as easy to follow.  It makes a lot of sense to use both wind and solar power, so that as the weather changes, you still have an energy supply.

Once the second windmill and the solar panels are completed, I'll probably use a qualified electrician to install them, as I'm not competent to do that.  Once done, I should save around 60% on my electricity bills which I'll be more than happy with ... I'll also be pretty much imune from power cuts.

I think Earth4Energy is a terrific product that anyone keen to reduce both their energy costs and carbon footprint should consider getting.  It provides a really cheap way of getting started with renewable energy.

You can read more about Earth4Energy here ...