Anyone else using old washing machine motors for wind turbine builds?

Rewound a Hotpoint drum motor last spring and it's basically a very expensive paperweight that occasionally charges my Victron BMV to 12.1v during a gale 😂

Jokes aside, the rewinding process nearly broke me — got the winding pitch wrong twice and ended up with something that generated more heat than electricity, which at least kept the cabin warm I suppose.

Few things I'd actually say are worth knowing if you're going down this rabbit hole:

• Pole count matters massively — more poles = lower cut-in speed = actually useful in the UK where "wind" means "a slightly disappointed breeze"
• Strip the stator back completely, don't try to reuse the original windings, learn from my mistakes
• Neodymium magnets glued to the rotor — there's a whole rabbit hole on magnet spacing that I'm still lost in six months later
• The shaft coupling to your turbine blades will absolutely be the thing that fails first, budget for three attempts minimum

Currently getting maybe 40-50w in a decent wind from mine, which powers absolutely nothing meaningful but makes me feel like I'm "off-grid" while my Fogstar battery does all the actual heavy lifting from the solar panels.

Anyone managed to get one of these spinning efficiently enough to actually charge an EV overnight? Asking for a friend (the friend is me, the EV is very flat).

@MrBodge73 oh no, the post cut off right as it was getting interesting! What happened during the rewinding process??

I've been tempted to try something similar for my tiny house build — I've got a dead Indesit motor sat in the garage doing absolutely nothing. Did you calculate the pole pairs before rewinding or just have a go and see what happened?

Also curious what blade setup you're running — did you fabricate your own or buy something off the shelf? I've seen a few people pair these with PVC pipe blades cut at an angle but I genuinely don't know if that's efficient or just folk wisdom at this point.

12.1v in a gale is... optimistic 😅 Is there a sweet spot RPM-wise where it actually produces something useful, or is it a fundamentally flawed approach with washing machine motors?

Spider85 | 📍 Derbyshire | ⚡ 2.4kW Solar + DIY Wind

Ha, @MrBodge73 cliffhanger there! Guessing the winding resistance ended up too high for low wind speeds to overcome? Classic problem with washing machine motors - they're wound for mains frequency operation so you end up needing a proper gale just to see any meaningful output.

I've had better luck with tumble dryer motors personally - fewer poles but the air gap geometry tends to suit rewinding better. Still not good exactly, but less terrible 😄

What gauge wire did you go with and how many turns per coil? Those two variables make or break it. I went way too fine on my first attempt and the thing put out lovely voltage but absolutely no current to speak of. Looked great on the multimeter, useless in practice!

Also worth checking your rectifier - a dodgy bridge can mask decent output and make it look worse than it is.

@MrBodge73 genuinely want to know if the rewinding process nearly killed you or nearly killed the motor, because both outcomes seem equally plausible with a Hotpoint drum motor.

I've been eyeing up a dead Indesit I pulled from a neighbour's skip for exactly this sort of project — for the garden office setup. Before I go down this rabbit hole though, a few things I can't find straight answers on:

1. What pole count did you end up with, and how did you calculate target RPM for useful cut-in wind speed?
2. Did you use a 3-phase bridge rectifier going into your Victron, or something else?
3. Is 12.1v in a gale a winding problem or a blade/rotor design problem?

Asking because I'd rather learn from your expensive paperweight than make my own expensive paperweight.

Been down this exact rabbit hole. Ended up with a permanent magnet alternator conversion instead of rewinding — salvaged neodymium magnets from dead hard drives and epoxied them to the rotor. Nowhere near as romantic as a full rewind but actually works consistently.

@MrBodge73 the 12.1v in a gale problem sounds like your rectification rather than the motor itself? What are you running on the AC side before the bridge rectifier — any load dump or crowbar circuit? Without one you'll fry something eventually when the wind picks up properly.

Also worth noting: washing machine motors vary massively by manufacturer. Hotpoint/Indesit ones are generally a pain. Old Hoover or AEG motors with more accessible windings tend to be friendlier for this kind of abuse. Check the stator tooth count before committing to anything.

Ozzy | 📍 Array | ⚡ Solar

@DODQueen raises the key point — the induction motor rewinding route is genuinely brutal for the output you get. The fundamental problem is slot geometry: those motors are wound for 50Hz AC operation, so the slot depth-to-width ratio is optimised for many thin turns of relatively heavy gauge wire. When you're trying to produce useful 3-phase AC at 150-400RPM (realistic direct-drive turbine speeds), you need far more turns per coil to generate meaningful voltage, which means you're stuffing undersized wire into slots designed for something else entirely.

The copper fill factor degrades badly, resistance climbs, and your voltage drop under any real load becomes laughable — which likely explains @MrBodge73's 12.1V situation.

PMA conversion using neodymium magnets bonded to the rotor is more work upfront but the electrical characteristics are actually suited to low-speed generation. Worth the extra effort.