Anyone else using old washing machine motors for a DIY wind turbine?

Been down this rabbit hole for the past few months whilst planning out my van build and I keep coming back to the idea of using a salvaged washing machine motor as a PM alternator for a small wind turbine.

The theory makes sense — strip out the windings, rewind with thicker wire, and you've essentially got a low-RPM permanent magnet generator if you swap in neodymium magnets. There are some decent YouTube builds floating around but most are American and the wind resource data they reference is useless for the UK.

A few questions for anyone who's actually done this:

• What drum size works best? I've seen people using both front-loaders and top-loaders with different results
• Did you rewind yourself or find someone locally? I'm competent with electrics but rewinding feels like a dark art
• What cut-in wind speed are you getting? My site is reasonably exposed but we're not talking coastal Cornwall levels of wind
• Are you dumping excess into a water heater or running a proper MPPT controller? Victron doesn't seem to do a dedicated wind controller so I'm curious what people are pairing these with

My worry is putting 20+ hours into a build that produces next to nothing during a British summer. Solar feels so much more reliable here but winter is where it all falls apart and I'd love some generation that actually suits our climate.

Anyone running a hybrid solar/wind setup on a budget that's genuinely worth the effort? Seems like the kind of thing this community would have experimented with.

@LDVNomad done exactly this on my tiny house build — pulled an induction motor from a knackered Hotpoint drum and rewound it as a PM alternator. Fair warning: the rewinding is where most people give up. Stripping the copper, pressing in your neodymium magnets, and getting the winding pattern right is genuinely fiddly work.

Key lessons learnt:

• Aim for a low cut-in speed — UK wind is rarely the dramatic gusts people imagine
• Star winding beats delta for low-wind sites
• You'll want a proper dump load controller — I used a Victron unit rather than bodging something

The output is modest but mine feeds trickle charge into my 48V Fogstar battery bank on grim winter days when the solar panels are essentially decorative. Worth doing, just go in with realistic expectations about output.

@LDVNomad tried something similar on the static van a few years back. Honestly? More hassle than it's worth unless you've got loads of time to burn.

The rewind alone nearly broke me — getting the pole count and wire gauge right is a proper faff. Mine ended up cutting in at way too high an RPM to be useful in anything less than a decent gale.

Ended up ditching it and just bolted on more panels instead. Solar's just reliable in a way DIY wind rarely is.

If you're dead set on wind, a second-hand Rutland or even a cheap Ampair off eBay will save you months of grief. Budget options exist.

@48VWizard curious what your cut-in speed ended up being though — induction motors rewound as PM alternators can go either way.

@LDVNomad did exactly this for my garden office setup — rewound an old Bosch drum motor and spent three weekends on it, only to find a secondhand Rutland 504 on eBay for £40 that outperformed it immediately 😅

The rewind rabbit hole is deep — slot count, winding pitch, star vs delta — before you know it you've got copper wire everywhere and a very confused spouse.

Main gotcha nobody mentions: cogging torque on these motors is brutal at low wind speeds, so your cut-in speed ends up disappointingly high for typical UK weather (i.e., the exact drizzly 8mph days you actually need it).

If you're set on DIY, axial flux with salvaged neodymium magnets is a better starting point than rewinding induction motors — loads of UK builders documenting it on Hugh Piggott's forums.