If I use model aircraft propellers as wind turbines how good would the performance be? My suspicion is that the blade pitch is too steep because the aircraft flies faster than the average wind speed. I would be interested in any hints on purchasing cheap wind turbine blades.
As far as pitch is concerned the modern wind turbines have to vary pitch according to wind and have mechanisms for doing that. Model airplanes fly in Reynolds number (Re) range of 50,000 to 106. Whereas wind turbines operate in the range 200000 < Re < 2.2 x 106. Generally Reynolds number range below 300,000 lies in Low Reynolds Number Regime and aerodynamics in this regime in dominated by performance degrading phenomena like laminar separation, recirculating bubble, laminar reattachment etc. These not only cause very poor aerodynamic performance but also cause instability. So Low Reynolds number aerodynamics (model planes) is drastically different from conventional aerodynamics (larger wind turbines). Low Re applications like model planes (propeller blades) use special airfoils called Low Re Airfoils like Eppler, Somers, Selig etc. Only smaller wind turbines fall in the upper region of Low Re range.
So I guess you can use model plane blades as wind turbines but with a CAUTION that at higher winds when Re exceeds 300000 the performance is likely to be very poor.
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