About DIY Energy Hub

August 2023. Third summer the bill came in at $380. First time: Phoenix heat wave, fine. Second time: meant to replace the thermostat, never did, fine again. Third time I pulled four years of bills out of the kitchen junk drawer and laid them on the table. $380. $380. $392. I was on a browser tab for solar kits by midnight. Three weeks later my wife found the credit card statement and asked about the $400 panel array that had appeared on the back porch without a conversation happening first.

I'm Derek. IT support technician in suburban Phoenix. Eighteen months ago I started running energy experiments in the garage alongside the day job. Solar setups first — a 400W array wired into a 100Ah battery bank, which I measured every morning for six weeks with a Fluke 117 before I trusted the numbers enough to write about them. Then a magnetic generator kit from a forum seller who was very confident about the output figures. He was off by a factor of six. Then a homemade wind turbine that lasted twenty-two days before a blade problem made itself obvious in a way that took some drywall with it. The car hasn't been inside the garage since February. The south wall has a dent I've stopped mentioning.

Every build on this site gets a parts list, a rough cost, and what the multimeter actually read — not the product page estimate. By month three with the solar setup and battery bank, my bill was closer to $260. The failures get the same documentation: a magnetic rotor kit that produced less than a watt under good conditions is worth the same write-up as a setup that actually moved the meter. Both are information. You need both to make a real call.

Not an electrician. Not an engineer. Consult one before anything permanent. I started keeping a fire extinguisher next to the workbench in March. My wife's exact words: "finally."

Background and testing setup: author page.

Some links here are affiliate links — I earn a small commission if you buy through them, at no extra cost to you. I only link to products I've personally built or tested in this garage.