Last steps in the foundation for our Re-driven 10k wind turbine

The last step of building the foundation is taking the forms off and the dirt is pushed back.

Now were back to waiting. First, waiting for the cement to cure and then for the tower and turbine to arrive.

Rodney from Rual Bolt Generation and Wind says the parts will be coming in about 4-7 weeks. He said he would try to do a better job at keeping us up-to-date on what is happening.

The next layer of the foundation

The next layer is made with forms that sit above the underground base.

The top layer of the foundation contains the bolts that that support the tower. The tallest pipes are conduit that will hold the electric cable coming down from the top of the tower and come out under ground to connect to the house.

Pouring the Cement for our Redriven Wind Turbine foundation

Six inches of rain added to the fun and created a big mess for the cement pouring. We had to get a special pump and pipeline to transport the cement to the turbine area. With all the rain, the cement truck would have gotten buried in the mud. So we had an unexpected expense to pump the cement from the driveway to the turbine site. The installers were very nice and professional inspite of the gruling rainy work conditions.

The digging begins!

The digging begins for the foundation of our wind turbine.

Still no digging

Déjà vu

We are still waiting for the digging to begin. They say it will be the beginning of next week if all goes well. Apparently, the digging on the projects before ours are are not going so well. They said they would be here Wednesday last week.


I got a copy of a letter from NYSERDA. The letter that said our installers had 120 days to get the system connected. Unfortunately, the letter was un-dated. We got our approval from NYSERDA back in July. I would think those 120 are running out soon.

Getting ready for the tower and cabling

This week the people that place little flags to mark the electric and phone lines will be coming. This is to make sure that we don’t dig in the wrong area for the wind turbine foundation and the underground cables to attach to the inverter.

It is also time to get insurance. I talked to my insurance company back in February when I started this project.

One article on the net that I found helpful on insurance was this one by Mick Sagrillo, Sagrillo Power & Light


http://www.awea.org/smallwind/sagrillo/ms_insur2.html


We’ll need insurance for an “appurtenant structure” and possibly liability insurance (which we already have). From what I’ve read so far, it seems New York State doesn’t allow utilities to require liability insurance.

More info on Redriven the company

I found this interesting article from AgriNews about Redriven – it is old, but I had never seen it before. This gives a little more info about the company.

http://www.agrinewsinteractive.com/fullstory.htm?ArticleID=9835&ShowSection=Front%20Page

My installer Rodney Weaver from Rural Generation and Bolt is quoted too.

Going with the 80 foot tower!

I’ve decided to go with the 80 foot tower .

-The payback period is shorter

- I wouldn’t have to wait for NYSERDA to re-approve me

- I'm getting a tower that has been out and working for over a year

- I’ve spent a lot of money all ready – it is time to make some green power!

My installer says he is ordering the anchors, rebar and pad. We should be ready to dig in 3 weeks. Now I’ve got to clean my garage so I have room on the wall for the inverter equipment. I think my installer said he needed a 6ft by 6ft space. I’ll have to ask again for the spec for that that wall.

Weibull curve

My price for the tower was not right - sorry back to the drawing board on trying to figure out the pay back to determine if this is the right thing to do. My installer thinks that the NYSERDA re-aproval for a 100 vs. 80 foot tower will be quick.

Ellen

Back in NYSERDA's queue for a taller wind turbine tower

My quest for my Redriven 10KW wind turbine continues, but now hopes are a little higher (pun intended). This week I received my modified building permit and environmental survey to go up to 120’ and I finally I got the price for the 100’ tower. I can’t afford the 120 ft tower. We’re going for the 100-foot! Now, we have to re-submit to NYSERDA. They give an extra $30 incentive for every foot you go above 80 ft. We’ll get $600 dollars off the price of the larger tower. Hopefully, NYSERDA will not take forever to approve my new taller tower.

I just got an anonymous comment that 120’ would be insane on a 10KW – Anonymous is 100’ insane too? I do realize that I’m crazy to do this . . . I’m still in the stock market too and some how I still sleep most nights.

I’ll do my new pay back calculation later and show everyone how insane I really am.

Still waiting to get the price of the Redriven 100 or 120ft tower

I'm still waiting for the price for the 100 and 120 foot towers. On June 4th, Rodney said he would have the price in a week or so Does anyone know of anyone that has gotten a price for the 100 or 120 foot tower for the 10K? At some point, I'm going to have to just go with 80' . I can't wait for ever to see if I might be able to afford a higher tower.

NYSERDA approval has arrived

Great news! I’ve got my NYSERDA approval. We could start poring cement, but I’d still like to find out how much more it would cost to go up 20 feet or ever 40 more feet. I wanted at least 100 feet in the beginning, but they didn’t make a 100-foot hydraulic tower then. They do now.

My installer doesn't have the pricing for the higher towers yet. They’ve got it for the 20KW but not for my 10KW. Just another week and ½, but that is what they have been saying for a month or so. I think what I’ll do is talk to my town about what it will take to amend my permit to cover up to 120ft just in case I can afford to go the extra feet.

It really means a lot to the projected energy out put. Here are the stats the NYSERDA’s way of measuring.

With an 80 ft tower I could produce 41.1 KWH daily
With a 100 ft tower 52.7 KWH daily almost 28% more
With a 120 ft tower 63.6 KWH daily 55% more power

If power was 10 cent a kW the power I’d be producing would be 4.11 dollar per day with the 80ft tower or 5.27 per day.

I’d have to go back to NYSERDA to get there approval again for the higher tower. I’m not sure how many more months we’d be waiting. They give more money based on tower height. Also, the Federal tax credit is uncapped so I’d get 30% back on the added expense of the extra feet.

It is a very windy day today. Wish I had my wind turbine up and spinning.

Waiting for NYSERDA

I’m in the final stages of getting verbal NYSERDA approval! No, I’m not sure what that means, but this has been taking a long time. NYSERDA is The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority that gives funds for alternative energy. This project would not be possible with out their approval.

NYSERDA required an environmental study. That slowed my application down a little. Apparently, most towns require an impact study. My town didn't require a study, so I had to get them to fill out the forms. If not, I'd have to do the NYSERDA study that is pages and pages.

I also had to sign off on the promised power that my system will produce. NYSERDA’s estimates on the wind I'll have seem low, but I guess they want you to be realistic about the power you could produce.

There is some good in this wait. While I’ve been waiting, Redriven has started to offer 100 and 120 ft towers. I’m waiting to see the pricing of those options, but that means getting a new permit too. Once I get the pricing of the towers I'll do the comparison.

I guess I better get used to this waiting. My installer said that once we get the approval, it will take one month for the cement to cure for the base.

Small wind - is it worth the price?

I'm a member of the small-wind-home@yahoogroups.com . This a group of people interested in Small wind. Someone posted this article from Low Tech magazine. Redriven the turbine that I'm waiting to install was not in the study. Of coarse the small wind group found many things wrong with the study.

http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/04/small-windmills-test-results.html As you can see from this looking at the test, their towers were not tall enough. The turbines should tower over the trees like the radio tower in the picture.

One of the conclusions of this article is that large scale turbines are more efficient. Would anyone disagree? But what they are missing is that these small wind turbines will help promote wind. They will prove to people that wind generators are not the evil noise machines that the anti wind people would have everyone believe.


I considered going big - getting a lot of neighbors or investors to get a very large wind turbine. I've seen how much work it is to get permits to do that kind of project. There was an attempt to do a wind farm near where I live. There was a huge out cry from the community that ended with a ban on all large scale wind farms project. Maybe my small project will show them that wind turbines are not so bad. Then when a neighbor tries to get a permit to go a little bigger there will not be the backlash. Some day we might get those more efficient models in our hood.

We could invest in wind farm stock, but we all know how much fun the stock market is these days.

Reports of issues with the Redriven 20KW Turbines blades

It seems there are a few reports of Redriven 20KW wind turbines breaking off blades during high winds and a few others that almost had the same fate. (See the comment left on my April 4 entry).

Here is what I’ve found:

Back in February, there was a report of a high school with three Redriven turbines that had blades hit the pole and flew off. See this link for more details

http://www.wind-watch.org/news/2009/02/10/blade-breaks-off-wind-turbine/

Here is an account of several more having the same issue.

http://www.windaction.org/news/20716

I contacted Scott Jackson who wrote the report. He said that the 10KW are not having the same issues with the blades breaking up but have had controller issues.

He gave me the name of someone with the 10KW in his back yard. He said this person could tell me about the controller issue first hand. I called him and he said that he did have controller issues, but Redriven took care of the problem by providing a retro fit. They added a resistive load. He has not had the problems since the retrofit. He's not worried about the blade issue and is now thinking of getting a 20KW with a tilt up tower. ( I didn't know 20KW could tilt up). He would then move his 10KW to another site. He said that he can see many wind turbines from his property. During a recent storm, many of turbines in the view from his home lost blades. He hasn’t lost a blade yet.


I also found this article about how Redriven is fixing the issues at Perkins High School.

http://www.morningjournal.com/articles/2009/04/18/news/mj913904.txt

This article says that Redriven is replacing the blades at Perkins High School with an older technology blade and is monitoring now for vibrations.

I would love to hear more from people with first hand experiences with Redriven. Please contact me or post your comments.

*******Update *** 5-30-09 here is another artical on this topic ******

http://www.agrinewsinteractive.com/fullstory.htm?ArticleID=10072&ShowSection=News


******Update ****10-03-09 I found more info on the Perkins School . Here is a news letter tell more details about testing and new blades.
http://www.perkins.k12.oh.us/pages/uploaded_files/Perkins%20United%20Fall%202009%20for%20web.pdf

also a news paper article
http://www.sanduskyregister.com/articles/2009/08/31/front/1582172.txt


UPDATE - May 2010 ****see what Redriven says about new designs

Is the Redriven's Wind Generator the right choice for a home owner?

UPDATE : 12/21/10 -  Redriven no longer gets their turbines from the SWG - Yangzhou Shenzhou  Company.  More than a year ago they started making their own parts in China. Redriven has their own factory in China run by Cameron Grant.  None of the parts of my turbine are manufactured by  SWG - Yangzhou Shenzhou  Company.

Paul Gipe is THE authority on Wind power. In his book, Wind Power, he says “ Rotor diameter says it all”. What you are looking for is energy not power. Your ability to capture the wind’s energy is what is important. Of course hub height is also important. The trade off with hub height is the ability to service the turbine. We settled for 80ft in order to get the ability for a hydraulic tilt up tower.

Gipe also says that the power curves given by manufactures are just “informed guess work” and should be viewed with “ a good dose of skepticism.”

The power curve is made up of:

Star-up Speed (starts turning)
Cut-in Speed (start producing power)
Rated speed (speed that it reaches is rated power)
Peak power (Max power it can produce)
Cut-out speed (Speed that the generator stop producing power and go into protection mode)
Furling Speed (For turbines with tail vanes)
Wind Speed Bin (A way to produce discrete data from continuous data)

The Redriven Turbine’s published data in this area is superior to other 10KW turbines. Longer blade diameter, low start up wind speed the ability extend the peak power with the active yaw points to a better performing wind turbine.

However! Another big consideration is reliability. Everyone expects to get many years out of a wind turbine. This is my biggest concern in picking the Redriven product. It is very new and doesn’t have a proven track record of performance. If the product has many issues, will Redriven and my installer be able to be able to keep the installed based operational and be profitable during the five year warrantee period. Will we be able to get parts to keep the turbine working long enough to get our investment back?

I started my investigation trying to find out about the Chinese company that make Redriven’s turbine. I did a search with the terms Redriven and China and came up with shipping documents http://www.importgenius.com/importers/redriven.html
Yangzhou Shenzhou shipping to Redriven in Canada.

As soon as you go to the SWG - Yangzhou Shenzhou web site it is clear that is the Redriven product. Same look, same tower, same hydraulic lifting mechanism.
http://www.f-n.cn/


I did some investigation on the Internet and found that Redriven’s supplier is SWG - Yangzhou Shenzhou. They have been in business for 12 years. ISO 9000 certified.

One of the best sites for seeing the product that the Chinese manufacturer sells that I have found is http://www.evolvegreen.ca/catalog/item/6319999/6614526.htm
They have many manufacture PDFs

http://shenzhougenerator.en.alibaba.com/
also shows the wind turbines.

How did I pick a Redriven Wind Turbine with Rural Generation and Wind as an installer?

It all started years ago, when my husband and I started to realize that our passive solar house built in the 70s was not cutting it. On sunny days, we were warm – sometimes too hot, but on subzero and cloudy winter days, we were really cold. We have a woodstove and that helped. Unfortunately, we were paying a lot of money to run blowers that sort of warmed the house at night. We had all the work and dirt that a woodstove offers as well. Also, my husband has mold and dust mite allergies so blowing air around is not good for him. To sum it up our passive solar heating was not working for us.

We decided to look at other green alternatives. We found the list of NYSERDA installers

At that time there were only a hand full of Authorized Installers to choose from and we pick Gay Canough, ETM Solar Works because she was close. She came out to our house and for a fee gave us a price for Solar and for wind. They were both crazy prices with ~20 year paybacks. I think Solar was $110K and Wind was going to be about $60K and the incentives didn't help much. She said wind was the best for our situation, but at that time (I guess 4-6 years ago?) NYSERDA limited you to 10KW turbine. She could sell us a Bergey 10K but only one turbine with the NYS incentives and we would need another one to cover all of our needs with only a little or no incentive money, so two turbines two towers! We knew this was crazy so needless to say we did jump at this offer.

About two years ago, we looked at using Geothermal heating, but that had a huge cost. It would take a lot of construction on our house to deliver the heat to each room. What we really needed was supplemental heat on non-sunny days – and electric does that pretty well. Heating each room when needed- but also includes a big bill from the electric company for Dec, Feb and March.

I kept my eye on the powernaturally site and finally, NYS opened up the eligible list to turbines larger than 10K and had 20KW turbines in the approved list. I bought the Paul Gipe book Wind Power. I’m on my third pass through it – every time – I know more and so I’m able to get more out of it.

In reading Paul Gipe's book, it was clear that you should by the biggest turbine and tower that you can afford. That it is not worth putting up a big tower unless you had a decent size wind turbine to put on it. Something that was intuitive to me, but now with expert advice I was now certain that I needed a 20KW turbine. Going back to the list, there are only a few eligible installers that will do a system over 10KW. I called back and emailed several times ETM to see if they did 20kw turbins. ETM is the company that gave us that first estimate. After about two months, I finally got someone to answer the phone. They didn’t have a copy of our old estimate and they also said they were concentrating now on the solar side. Wind was just to much pain. Towns were not giving permits and or neighbors were making it hard to install. Solar was just much easier. I guess they didn’t need the wind business because they were too busy to answer the phone or the constant emails.


So I started my campaign to see if I could get any of the installers eligible for over 10k to call or email me back. They do not answer phone calls or emails – with the exception of two.

Daniel Roy from Renovus Energy, Inc. called me right back. Unfortunately, he only had a 5K or a 50K, way to small or way to big. We discussed my situation for a long time (for free). He was the first to tell me about that First Look site (see my blog posting on how to measure the wind). The 50KW he sells sounds great, but was just too expensive for one homeowner to afford. I considered a coop with neighboors, but I didn’t think I had the time to take on something like that.

Next, I found a new person on the list – he was from ReDriven Inc. http://www.redriven.net/
I Called Christopher Grant and went right to his cell phone and he said he worked for the Manufacture ReDriven, but he gave me the name of someone that he had just trained as an installer near us and who was on the NYSERDA list. I must have over looked his name before, because his last name was Weaver. I must have emailed and call Art Weaver 20 times and he never answered, but Rodney Weaver from Rural Generation and Wind had a receptionist! Who could make an appointment to come over in less than a week! So I made that appointment.

I told a friend at work what I was up to, she said her husband has been trying to get any of the wind installers to call him back as well – he was excited to hear that someone was returning calls.

So on Martin Luther King Day, Rodney came over. I told him I was interested in the 20K turbine. He opened up his computer and checked out the FirstWind site too. He said we had more that he expected. So, he figured out the price of the 20k turbine. It was way too much – I don’t remember exactly – I think my part would be in the ~$48,000 range. He looked at our electric bills. It showed how much power we used and what the buy back rate would be if we had extra. He put our average wind speed in the Redriven power calculator and it showed that we would be able to produce enough with their 10KW turbine to meet our energy needs with a tad left over. He also told us that with the 10KW you could get a monopole tower with hydraulic tilting tower, so that you don’t need a crane for maintenance. He said the crane would cost $2,000 per day to bring the 20k Turbine down for maintenance. At that point my husband and I were convinced we really didn’t want a 20KW. Rodney didn’t tell us this but it was apparent that a crane cost, would cut a minimum of 2K out of the payback schedule per year for maintenance- if we were lucky. He said that for the first 5 years the warrantee covered the repairs and parts. I asked if a longer warrantee was available, but a longer term is not available yet.

Rodney explained the turbine is made in China and the Electronic controlling and grid connection components are made in Canada. There is a five-year warrantee. He told us what the installation involved. We would have the electronic parts in our garage and the turbine needed to be less than 300 feet from the house so that we didn’t have a lot of power loss on the electric cable.


Rural Generation and Wind is new to the wind business. http://www.ruralgenerationandwind.com/
I think they said they have installed about ~ 8 systems. I forget where exactly- not in NYS but I believe some in Maine and Canada. They are not new to the normal gas generator business, that people would have in their homes for power outages.

We walked around outside to decide on the best spot. He said he if could sell us the Bergey 10KW too, but it wouldn’t give us enough power to meet our needs. We knew that from our investigation into Bergey years ago.

Next I went into heavy-duty web searching mode to see what I could find out about the company’s. There is not a lot out there. That is one of the reasons I wanted to create this blog. I would have really liked to hear more from others who have taken to plunge and that have real life results. If you are out there please let me know.
I’ll post more on my investigation on another day.

The permit is in the mail

The town called and our permit is in the mail! The guy who does the permits for the town said he would love to come and see it when it is done.

Getting a permit for the 80 foot tower

This week we submitted the paper work for a permit for a 80 foot tower with the town. We'll find out in a few more days if this is going to be easy or if we'll have to go to a town meeting to plead our case. I submitted pictures along with the satellite photos, and a survey map that show there are no close neighbors to the turbine. We'll keep our fingers crossed.

Predicting My Wind Speed

I know it is windy at my house, but how windy is it really?

Late last fall, we bought anemometer http://www.peetbros.com/shop/category.aspx?catid=18 . the anemometer was pretty inexpensive (compared to a wind generator). My husband bought 35ft of antenna poles from Lowes and braced it with guy wires. He extended the wire to come into the house and connected it to the computer and the display box that shows the temp and wind speed and direction. We have a few months of data now. Now we have some data, but measuring at only 35 feet. If you have seen the charts wind increases dramatically with height, but still we could see direction and get a some data rather than just a feeling that we have wind.

There is also a web site where you can go find data on your average wind speed called first look. http://firstlook.3tiergroup.com/ you can plug in your address or your latitude and longitude and find your wind speed at 80ft. When I plug in my proposed generator site, I get a average range of 8.5 to 13.5 mph which is great. Watch out 80meters =262 feet so most of use will use the 20meter button.

******UPDATE ************

In early April we had a 55mph wind that bent the pole right in half, so antenna pole is NOT a good option for anemometer mounting. The 30 foot fall broke the cup off of the anometer too.

Well that is what this blog is all about - learning from others

Small Wind I'm really doing it

After thinking about getting a wind turbine for about 10 years and seriously looking into it for the last two years, I've finally done it. I'm might be crazy, but here I go. I've put a ton of money down on Redriven 10kw wind turbine.

See a lot of information of people that have installed a Redriven Turbine. Most articles end with the owner saying I can't wait to get it connected to the grid. There is little to no info about the results they are getting.

I've created this blog to chronicle my journey as I get my permit , NYS approvals for the NYSERDA incentives, the turbine installed and then most importantly - how is it working.