Small Wind Diary

Dec to Jan Results -Retraction - I made a mistake last month

2012-01-29T11:02:00.004-05:00

Results report for Dec 27 to Jan 27

I was putting in my calculations for this month and I found in a mistake in my spreadsheet. In my excel formula, I copied downward the wrong calculations for the last 2 months. I found this because the numbers just weren’t adding up. We had an average wind speed this month of 8mph but the results didn’t improve on my sheet. So I’ve gone back and fixed my error.

The wind gusts (show as blue dots) did cause the system to shut down several times this month.

Month of Jan Wind Speed

This month (Dec 27 to Jan 27) average 8 mph with a gain of 367KWH with the inverters putting out 581KWH.

Month of Dec Wind Speed

Last month the average wind speed was 6 mph and we made 320KWH with the inverters putting out 408 KWHs

We had some high peaks of wind speed, but these wind gusts cause the system to shut down in protection mode . Also, the system needs to do a lot of yawing to move out of the wind on these gusty days. A slower steady wind speed will produce much better results.

Wind Turbine Popped it's Lid

2012-01-15T14:41:00.001-05:00

After a very windy day, we noticed that the wind turbine popped it's lid. So in the bitter cold we had to take it down one more time. We think it popped because of the vibration caused by the loose hub. Redriven still hasn't come and we don't have the socket to tighten it ourselves. It would be best to turn the yaw break on and take it down face up. We don't know how to do that trick or if it is even possible with the newest software. REDRIVEN we need a Tech!

Loud noise source found?

2012-01-01T11:37:00.001-05:00

My husband an I took the wind turbine down yesterday to see if it was a loose nut on the flange that was causing the loud airplane sound. when we shook the blades they did seem to wobble back and forth more than it should and made kind of a " wa wa" sound. One thing we didn't consider was that this nut was gigantic. About twice the size of the nuts that hold the tower together. We tried to tighten it with a pipe wrench but that would not move it. With the blades on, you really can't get a wrench in there very well. You really need a big socket to go around this or take at least one blade off. Here is a picture of what the nut looks like, under the hub cap.

I looked back at my youtube video - and saw that it was originally tightened down with a pipe wrench but before the blades were attached so there was some room to get the wrench next to the nut. You can also see that the shaft sticks out about 1/4" and now it is flush with the shaft.

We called Redriven to tell them our findings and that we couldn't tighten it ourselves. They said they would send someone next week to tighten this down.

Decembers Results

2011-12-29T18:20:00.001-05:00

Like the snow, the wind is not coming this year. So again not much power made. (see the chart below)

For the month we made ~~606KWH.~~ Mistake -Sorry 320KWH

My husband was able to down load the latest long board and user interface code. Now Redriven can download code remotely to the tower, long board. We have seen them do this several times - there is a warning on the main screen when it is getting a remote download. We are now on version 356 according to windveiw. Also since my last blog - Redriven had my husband change the Inverter numbers and they now read on windview. Next windy day, I'll give you a screen shot on how that looks.

We had a problem with a rattle noise - we thought were the breaks. That rattling noise has stopped coming as frequently, but now there is an increasing loud vibration noise. It sounds like a plane is landing in our yard. Does anyone else have noise like that when the wind gets blowing hard?

Windview What can you see?

2011-12-11T10:29:00.001-05:00

I received an email from a college professor that is the process of getting a Redriven wind turbine for the college. He asked about seeing the Wind view. I thought I would post this so you can see why we don't look at Windview very often. Our inverters are not connected, so there is not too much to see there. My husband has it on his cell phone (iPhone). I can't get it to display on my Blackberry. Another reason I don't look too often as I can't get it on my work laptop any more. The only browser that seems to work is Opera. I can't run that on my work PC. It is much easier to look out the window to see if it is running. If you are interested in how much power your making , you can't see it here. Take a look for yourself.

November Results

2011-11-27T17:52:00.001-05:00

This month we’ve had a few issues with the software. It has been having errors in low wind and doing a lot of extra yawing. We’ve had to unwind it twice. Not huge issues but we missed a few hours of wind here and there when we were sleeping or away. There is a new version of software that should fix these low wind issues, but we were not able to get it to load. We’re hoping a tech will come by soon to upgrade us. With the next version of software, upgrading will be able to be done remotely they say.

This month we had a total of 286KWH of power. The average wind speed for the month was only 5 miles per hour.

Other news this month – I’m glad to see that NYSERDA still has Redriven listed as a choice. The more turbines they have in NY State the more access we will have to the technicians.

http://www.nyserda.ny.gov/Page-Sections/Renewables/Small-Wind/Eligible-Wind-Turbines.aspx

October a Record Breaking Month

2011-10-29T09:49:00.002-04:00

Another record broken. From Sept 27 to Oct. 27 We produced 408 KWH for the month. Average wind speed was 6.3 mph. The inverters recorded that they produced 529KWH for the month. Also, we have been running without an outage since July!

Last Sunday Scott from Redriven was here and upgraded our system (Nacell, long board and HMI to version 3.34.

This was not a big upgrade. You can now get live wind speed on the main screen . The new software has Internet connection capability again. The main screen now has RPM, MPS and Degrees. It also had better error handling so there will be few times when it completely shuts down based on faults alarms. We've had it for 6 days and so far it seems better than the last code.

Another New Best Day Ever Oct 15th.

2011-10-16T17:03:00.001-04:00

The wind has picked up and so has the power we are making. 84KHW in a 24hour period.

Here is what the wind looks like for the period 6am to Midnight with an average wind speed of 15mph.

Absence of Wind Made for a Lackluster Month

2011-09-28T02:35:00.000-04:00

The wind was abysmal this month. With the exception of a few good days, there wasn’t much wind at all. The average wind speed for the month was a mere 3.3 mph. The wind turbine just breaks even in that range. This month, all the blame should be placed on Mother Nature. The wind turbine was ready to go but with no wind , it couldn’t produce. September 13 was the exception for the month the new best day ever but it couldn't make up for a lackluster beginning and end to the month.

This month we made a total of 69KWH.

Wind Sept 2011

New Best Day Ever! Sept 13th

2011-09-18T15:58:00.000-04:00

We learned during hurricane Irene that constant change of wind direction and gust are the enemy of wind power making. Although there was a lot of wind, the hurricane was pretty useless for making power. The big gusts would shut the turbine down into protection mode and when the gust stopped the constantly changing direction made for inefficient capturing of the wind.

However, September 13, 2011 “The NEW Best Day Ever” had a near constant moderate wind speed of 9 miles per hour and a constant direction from the south west.

We measured from 6am Sept 13 to 6am Sept 14 we made 60KWH with an average that day of 8.9miles per hour. Looking at the graph, it looks like the power was really made from 10am on averaging a steady ~12mhp.

Wind graph for Sept 13 2011

Wind direction for Sept 13

New best production day ever – In August?

2011-08-27T19:29:00.000-04:00

Things are looking up. Some of you might remember last August we had a net loss of 67 KWH of power running the turbine rather than making any power. With that in mind, we were shocked to have our “best production day ever” this month – 40KWH in a 24 hour period

My husband measures every morning so in order to see the wind you really need to piece together two daily measurement graphs. The best day ever was from 8am august 24 to 8am August 25th.

The new Redriven programing and brake design must be working. We had a net gain of 108KWHs for the month of August.

Here is the graph for the whole month. Although average wind speed is a very low 1.5 mph, there were plenty of gusts this month.

A hurricane is on its way up the eastern seaboard. Let’s hope it tracks so we only get a steady ~20 MPH. I'm hopeful we can beat that best day record soon and get a new best month ever record too.

Improvements with the new version of software

2011-08-21T20:06:00.000-04:00

We had a surprise visit from Kyle / Redriven Friday. He gave us an upgrade to Diagnostic HMI Version 3.18

We’ve noticed a few improvements in the software and were told about a few others.

The settings all save now in Flash. There is new flash program that seems to upload and download software. In the older version there were 3 setting that had to be re-entered when you lost power. These should hold now after a power outage.

The screen now turns off when you are not actively looking at it that should improve on power consumed by the system. Also the main screen shows Voltage, RPM and Wind speed all together on one graph displaying the last hour of readings.

Happy Anniversary!

2011-07-30T19:49:00.000-04:00

Wed July 27th was our one year anniversary of being connected to the grid.

First – This month’s reading. July is not a good month for wind we made 76KWH

Here is a graph I put together on wind speed vs.power produced.

This graph shows the average wind speed for the day and the power made for the day.

The reading from the inverter measuremt which shows the power they made before the loss of the system was 181.7 KWH.

For the year the inverters made 1,719KWH. Maybe not so bad considering the system was down most of the time between Sept and June.

My monthly reading added to gether is a net of 599 kWH for the year

We’ve been graphing each day – power gained on windy days and power lost on calm days is about 2 to 3 KWHs. When the wind is ~2.5m/s it seems to break even. The system seems to use about 300watts without any wind.

We’re still spinning!

2011-07-13T06:01:00.000-04:00

Yesterday we made 13 KWHs with average wind at 8.3 mph.

Were making power again!

2011-07-04T14:00:00.000-04:00

We took the turbine down and stuck a coat hanger in the hole at the end of each blade. On the blade that was continuously in the down position, I couldn't see in the hole. The hole didn't seem clogged when I stuck in the hanger and the hanger was not wet when it came out. We thought we were unsuccessful, but when we raised the tower, it started spinning! Possibly is was clogged and the water had moved to the center when it was lowered? In any case it is spinning freely and making power again.

Update: at 6PM - Ben said he did he did the same thing to the turbine in Governor NY and it is now working too.

We've got wind now but still not spinning

2011-07-03T16:50:00.000-04:00

We ran for just a few minutes very slowly last week and haven’t spun again since.

Ben from Redriven was here Thursday and Saturday and completely reloaded the software. Of course, as usual, no wind. But today there is plenty of wind and the turbine is not spinning.

My husband just came up with a plausible theory that one blade has water in it which prohibits it from spinning. I have noticed that lately it always stops in a t -shape with one blade strait down. It didn't seem to do that last fall. That would makes sense why it wouldn't spin without some serious wind if one blade had water in it. A while back Parker drilled some holes in the blades to let water out. Maybe he missed one or it is clogged.

Below is a picture of the new screen showing over 4 meters per second. Right now the wind is at 7 meters per second and the turbine is still not moving. Redriven says the other system in Governor, NY is behaving the same way. Redriven thinks it might have to do water that got into the generator while down for several months.

No errors at all, but still not moving.

We're working again, but now no wind!

2011-06-27T08:54:00.000-04:00

The Redriven guys, Ben and Dave, finished up Saturday morning. The wind turbine spun for a few minutes Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately, there hasn't been any wind since. Yesterday, the wind came up to 3 meters per second - starting speed, but didn't last long enough to really get going. The new way that the system yaws is much slower, so you need some consistent wind to get it started. I'll write more about the new yaw system soon and show the new display screen. The forecast for today is 1-2 miles per hour.

Today is also my monthly reporting day. Since we only made power for a few minutes this month and raised the tower a few times, we are in negative territory again. - 4 KWH this month.

Ben might be back today or tomorrow to grease up the turbine, he didn't have the grease with him on Saturday.

Redriven is here!

2011-06-25T11:02:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, they replaced the controller hardware in the nacelle and began wiring the new controller parts. They also replaced our yaw break that had been taken out last year. Dave Vandermeer ( the programmer) said we are going back to code 0. This code will be a light version with just the basics. It will just do the primary functions of on, off , moving out of the wind and fault protection. When there is a fault, we will have to manually restart it. Those higher functions like restarting will come with new code releases. The code and system is still not ready to for internet up or down load, so they will need to come back to upgrade for that function.

I told Dave that my expectations have been lowered. Last summer, I complained when the system was using a lot of power to sit there with no wind. Now, I’ll be very glad to just see it spinning. Dave said that is one of the improvements we will see right away. Now when it sits there with no wind it will go will use much less power than it did last summer. Perfect timing since we are headed into the no –wind season.

I’ll post more details later. They think they will get it running today!

Redriven says they will be ready in a few more weeks

2011-06-08T20:06:00.000-04:00

We have heard from Redriven that things are going well with the new software and that they are still working on the remote uploading of code from the Internet. They should be here to get us working again in a few weeks.

May Measurement Day

2011-05-28T11:36:00.000-04:00

At least the results for the Month for May are easy to calculate. 0 minutes of up time 0 KWH.

One good thing, my turbine was on the ground for the big wind storm that passed through two days ago. My local weather station is not showing up on the weather underground site. I wonder if the wind took down their anemometer tower. I hope they come back on line, it was great having that very local wind speed reference.

Hopefully, Redriven will be here soon to program the new equipment so I'll have have some results for June.

New controller in today

2011-05-23T20:24:00.000-04:00

A new Redriven installer was here today and completely replaced the controller in the garage. He also worked on the nacelle but we are not sure what he did in there. He said a full crew would be back in about a week to get it running.

Letter from Chris Grant saying new Cards are ready.

2011-05-21T15:56:00.000-04:00

I got an email May 17 from Scott O'Brien (Redriven Sales) with a letter from Chris Grant. It recognized that the new design was taking longer than expected, but the new cards are ready for deployment. They will be scheduling upgrades in the next few weeks.

Also, they will reset the warrantee period to the date that the new controller cards go in.

We are ready for that upgrade and hope that this one is the one that will keep working

.

Measurement day

2011-04-27T06:26:00.000-04:00

This month we made 4 KWHs with an uptime of ~8 hours.

Still waiting for that new card for the nacelle

Up again but only for 8 hours

2011-04-07T20:02:00.000-04:00

We mailed back just the Nacelle card to redriven for re-programming. It only worked for 8 hours this time, before it got another Nacelle fault. Now we are going to wait for the new nacelle card that is coming out in about a month. Hopefully, this one will hold the code

Another Nacelle Fault

2011-03-28T01:25:00.000-04:00

We were up and running for almost 24 hours before we got first an “over wind” and then an “over speed” and then the dreaded “nacelle fault” error.

We took the tower down and determined that the programming on the card in the nacelle was lost again.

Today is the monthly measuring day Feb 27 – March 27 we were up for a total of 1 day for the month and made 13kwh for the month, but lost 1 KWH lowering and raising the tower. Net gain for the month was 12KWHs. Average wind speed that one day was 10 mph with wind gusts at 28mph.

We are up and running again after being down for 42 days!

2011-03-26T10:11:00.000-04:00

Now I know why most people are just happy to see it spin. I really missed looking out there and watching it go. I can enjoy windy days again instead thinking of them as missed opportunities to make power.

When Parker was here last he diagnosed it was the computer cards that had issues so we sent both the controller card in the nacelle and in the “long board” back to Redriven to be checked out / refurbished.

Unfortunately, Parker is no longer working for Redriven, but my most excellent husband spent the whole day yesterday putting the cards back in and troubleshooting wiring connectivity issues. Being a wind tech or wind smith is a really hard job, in the summer. In the winter, it is just no fun at all. Lucky for us, my husband does this type of continuity checking for his work and has all the tools and he had time to do it. I had to work and wasn’t much help at all. Now we are back up and running again! There are only a few days left in March, the best month of the year for wind. It seems the winter just won’t give up this year so maybe the wind will continue to blow too.

What was the best production day so far?

2011-03-05T10:02:00.000-05:00

Anonymous person asked a really good good question, so I thought I'd post the answer rather than just commenting back. They asked since day 1 what was the best day of production? They also as for the best hour, but I don't have that hourly data. Luckily, my husband took a daily readings in December. I was grabbing momentary reading back in Summer/ Fall to try and make a power curve. When the temp got really cold in the garage, I was not that dedicated to the task any more.

Dec 28, 2010 we made 30KWHs. My local weather station about 1/2 a mile away and few feet higher said that the average wind speed that day was 12.5 mph and gusts were up to 32 mph. This would be a good day because the wind gusts didn’t get too high very often. If it is really gusty the wind turbine goes into protection mode and you shut down waiting for the wind to calm down.

Mark Mayhew from NYSERDA told me that March is the best month for wind in our area. We haven't been up any days yet in March, but I have heard some great wind the last few nights. Redriven let's get this thing fixed!

Results for Jan and Feb

2011-02-27T11:22:00.000-05:00

Today is measurement day. I didn’t post results last month since I was out of town, so this is my very sad two month report.

From Dec 27 to Feb 27^thwe made 134KWH. Keep in mind the turbine was only running for 16 of a possible 62 days.

No word yet from Redirven on when they are coming back to fix it.

Still down but with a new problem

2011-02-12T14:02:00.000-05:00

Parker came back on 2/10/11 Thursday morning and it definitely wasn’t the same old problem of losing code. This time something went wrong in the dog vane reading that caused the wind turbine to spin around and around in the same direction. There are normally fail safes that keep this from happening, but not this time. The cables wrapped around and twisted the cables around the hydraulic cables and the tower wouldn’t come down. The power cables came off the terminal and must have sent some power back to the control panel computer at the house. The computer is not talking anymore and appears to be dead. I guess another lesson learned is to look through the door at the cables before trying to lower the tower. It was bitterly cold when we put the tower back up Thursday night. This tower raising gets really old when your fingers get stiff from the cold putting all of the bolts back in. Parker said someone would be back next week to replace the computer. Let's hope it can be fixed without taking the tower down again.

Down again :(

2011-02-09T11:00:00.000-05:00

We were only running for 1 day and we were back down again. The good news is they have a plan on how to fix this, the bad news is yesterday would have been huge wind power day and we missed it. Let's hope we don't miss many more days like that.

Up and running again

2011-02-05T19:02:00.000-05:00

Sorry I haven’t been updating the blog, but there hasn’t been much to say. I was out of town for training and now I’m studying for a technical certification in my “spare” time. Parker was here from Redriven last week and tried to upload the code back into the Nacell card, but with no luck. Just has he suspect, The card would not load in the field. What we have been waiting for all this time is a new card that can be swapped out for the one we have. They don’t know yet why these cards loose their code.

Parker finally came today but late, so my husband and I lowered the tower before he got here. We’ve never done this with a large amount of snow before. My daughter cut a path with snow shoes, so it wasn’t as hard to walk in the snow to the turbine. Next time we know bring a bucket for the bolts so they don’t get lost in the snow. You also need to clear out the path for the piston. Neopreen gloves are handy too. The tower is so cold your bear hands stick to it and normal gloves make it hard to handle the washers.

The snow and ice packed in the space between the base sides. The ice blocked the piston so it couldn’t line up with the hole for the bolt to go through the base. It sure is a lot easier in the summer.

While we had the turbine down some snow piled on blades and the tower. We used a heat gun to melt some of the ice off of the blades so it wouldn’t be unbalanced when the wind got going. I also worried that when the tower went up that the ice might come down from the tower on us but it held for the time we were out there putting the bolts back in.

Now we wait for wind . . .

Another Nacelle Fault that won't clear

2011-01-12T06:15:00.000-05:00

Late Sunday night/ monday morning Jan 10, we got a Nacelle fault but it cleared when power cycled in the morning. Monday afternoon we got another Narcelle fault but this one won't clear.

December Results are in . . .

2010-12-27T19:54:00.000-05:00

For the month of December we made 228KWH of electricity. That includes being down from Dec 6 -12. That means we saved $35 off our electric bill this month and we had a lot of windy days.

Redriven gets a new investor

2010-12-18T20:11:00.000-05:00

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/partner/redriven-power-inc/news/article/2010/12/new-capital-investment-boosts-canadian-wind-turbine-company

Good news, Redriven has a new investor to help the business grow. It says that Redriven is "positioned as the 6th largest small wind manufacturer worldwide based on kW of sales".

We are up and running again!

2010-12-15T06:16:00.000-05:00

Parker and Scott were here yesterday. They worked very hard on a bitterly cold day and evening. The problem was that the computer in the Nacelle lost it programming. They couldn’t get it to reload, so they replaced it.

We checked the production meter before and after raising the tower. It seems that lowering the tower takes about 1KWHs and bringing it back up is about 1.5 KWHs.

Down again

2010-12-09T20:09:00.000-05:00

We got another Nacelle fault and it won't clear or startup again. We were really starting to make some power too.

Starting to Crank Out power now

2010-12-03T06:26:00.000-05:00

In the last week we've cranked out 88KWHs.

November Results

2010-11-28T08:46:00.000-05:00

This month the wind turbine was down more than up but in the last two days we have made more power than we did last month. The new Redriven system seems to be much better at reducing the parasitic power needed to just keep the system up.

This month the production meter that tracks the power that we can use read 85KWH. 51 KWH were produced just yesterday.

The inverts combined for the month made 131 KWH. I believe a lot of that power was used to raise and lower the tower. I think we lowered and raised the tower about 5 times this month. I'm not exactly sure how much power that uses but with the weight of that tower if has to be significate.

Here is the wind chart from a neighborhood weather station. We missed a bunch of great wind days this month but last two days were really windy.

Thanksgiving day

2010-11-25T12:21:00.000-05:00

Happy Thanksgiving United States readers! I’m very thankful that both Rural Wind & and Electric (Rodney and James) plus Redriven (Dave and Scott) were here for the last two days working hard to resolve the issues with our wind turbine. They replaced a cable that was 6 wire unshielded with a cable with 2 shields and 2 twisted pair cable. This cable replacement significantly reduced the noise and raised the control signal. Dave from Redriven also programed some checks (firmware 2.05) so the system will automatically reset on the over-speed error that we just started getting.

Now our wind turbine is back making power better than ever. Since they left yesterday, we have had no errors at all. Plus now at 3.75 miles per hour the meter stands still (no gain no loss). If you remember, with the older system, the meter stood still at 8 miles per hour. This means that when the wind turbine is slowly turning we will now have a net gain rather than a loss. The parasitic loss is now about 300 watts, we think it was about 600 –to 800 watts with the older control system. This should do great things for our power production.

Redriven was here this week.

2010-11-21T19:24:00.000-05:00

Redriven was here Tuesday and Wednesday this week. They got the wind turbine running Tuesday afternoon but night we started getting contiunous nacelle faults. The next day they came back but couldn't get the errors to stop. They now think the wiring between the controller and the nacelle is picking up interference. They said they would be back this coming week to work on it again. I think replacing the controller cable to the nacelle. It kills me that we are missing all of this great wind, this would have been the best month ever.

We're off line again

2010-11-07T10:19:00.000-05:00

The wind turbine worked for about two days. As luck would have it no wind days. On the third day a little wind and we got a Nacelle fault. Resetting it got it working again for a whole day. The next day we got a DV error (Dog Vane- I think?) and then another Nacelle fault. We have been unable to get it started back up. The anemometer shows no wind even when there is wind. So now we have everything turn off and are waiting for the next fix.

Windturbine back on line

2010-11-04T20:38:00.000-04:00

Parker came back Wednesday afternoon and work past dark getting our wind turbine running again. He put in another external power supply in the nacell. Of course since that time there has been no wind at all to test it out. Hopefully, there will be some tomorrow.

October Results

2010-10-28T20:59:00.000-04:00

Unfortunately, this months results were worse than last month – Only 49KWH. I can't give you the amount of power the Inverters made this month, since they need to be powered up to get the stats. The inverters have been off for the last few days. As you can see from the weather chart, there were some good wind gusts, but we missed a lot of days too.

This month we had a couple of issues with the wind turbine. My job (that pays) has been very busy, so I haven’t had much time for posting. The weekend of Oct 9th, the turbine would turn its self off. At first every few hours and then every hour. My husband set up a camera on it so we could easily watch it. We hoped we would see some kind of pattern or symptom just before it stopped, plus with the camera,we would know when it needed a reboot. It would always come back with when you power it off and back on. Rodney, our installer was convinced it was the power supply, but it was Canadian Thanksgiving on monday, so it would be hard to get an new power supply. Then on Sunday night it just died and wouldn't come back. It was off for about 5 days, then one windy day we tried it again and it worked. It would work for about a day or two at a time for about week. I think we made all of that 49KWH that week.

Parker from Redriven came out last weekend and gave us the upgrade to the “long board” they have been working on. He worked all weekend to get us going on the new system.

It included replacements of almost everything in the controller box, and upgrade to the controller program, a new Anemometer and a new power supply. ( I'll write more about this when I have more time)

The new system ran for about 2 days (with barely any wind) the good news is that the new power supply in the nacelle uses much less power. So when there was no wind those two days we hardly lost any power. Parker also made us a switch and taught us how to take the turbine up and down. the first time it went up I was was to busy taking pictures ( that didn't come out ) to pay attention to how to bring it up.

Parker say he will be back tomorrow with a fix. Unfortunately, today was one of the windiest days we’ve had since we got the turbine.

Three issues with the wind turbine but fast response to our call

2010-09-29T20:53:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, my husband noticed that it was windy but the wind turbine was not moving. He called Rodney and he came out today. They found three things that were wrong:

1) The Yaw break was burned up. Apparently it had been permanently on for the last two months, but this break will not be used until we get the new controller card.

2) There were some loose connections on the Yaw relays.

3) The a power supply needed to be moved in order to get more ventilation in the head.

It was impressive that Rodney came the next day after we called him. We are about 3 hours away from him. Hopefully, fixing these things will also help to reduce the power needed to run the turbine.

September Stats are in . . .

2010-09-27T21:36:00.000-04:00

First the good news . . . The winds were much better this month.

The combined Inverters made a 357KWHs !

Now the not so great news . . . The wind turbine again used up a lot of power. Our total wind production was 83KWH. This is the power left over for our personal use. We're hoping to do even better next month with the wind stop setting increased.

New settings and info on power use

2010-09-19T13:52:00.000-04:00

We had a surprise visit from Parker from Redriven Tuesday. He made some adjustments and explained some of the settings so we'll use less power in low winds. He also hooked up the inverters so they will show in WindView. (more on that later) Below is a picture of how the wind settings are now. Also, the units of measurement, definitions of what they mean, plus why that are set that way.

Parker told us that when we get the new controller, the break which now takes a lot of energy to remain open (off) will use less power to stay open. Now with the old controller, we are using full power to keep the break off. This means we'll see some energy improvements when we get he new controller. Maybe we'll be able to run the turbine next August without paying the grid for power.

Here are the definitions of the Wind settings.

Thank you Parker for helping all of us understand what the settings mean

Start wind = 6 mph that means when the anemometer shows 6 mph the start timer will start counting

Start time =60 seconds this mean the anemometer must show 6 mph for a count of 60 seconds to before it starts to hunt for the direction of the wind. The yaw motor will kick in and move the head to the right position. Moving it prior to that value is not worth the power it takes to move the head head with the yaw motor.

Stop wind = 5 mph this means that if the wind = 5 mph the stop wind counter will come on. We had this at 1 which meant it was always hunting.

Stop time =300 seconds. This means if the wind is below 5 mph for 300 second or 5 minutes it will stop hunting for the wind direction.

Max wind = 30.0 mph ( Changed from 25 mph) When the wind value from the Anemometer exceeds this speed, the system will automatically go into “OVERWIND” which shuts down the system. It shuts down by turning 90 degrees out of the wind and stops the blades via a contactor on the AC 3-Phase side in the controller.

Max time =When the Anemometer reads a wind speed LESS THAN “Max Wind” for the “Max Time” value (10 minutes) the system will restart. This allows the system to stay out of the wind in an OVERWIND condition as long as it sees 30mph+. The timer starts once the wind comes down below the “Max Wind” setting because if the system gusts back up above 30, it will continue to maintain out of the wind and shutoff. The logic is, if the wind stays down below the “Max Wind” setting long enough (10 minutes as predicated by the Max Time value) then the system is good to restart without the threat of an OVERWIND situation. OVERWIND is the only Automatically restarting fault condition. Max time means that when the Anemometer reads a wind speed LESS THAN “Max Wind” for the “Max Time” value (10 minutes) the system will restart. This allows the system to stay out of the wind in an OVERWIND condition as long as it sees 30mph+. The timer starts once the wind comes down below the “Max Wind” setting because if the system gusts back up above 30, it will continue to maintain out of the wind and shutoff. The logic is, if the wind stays down below the “Max Wind” setting long enough (10 minutes as predicated by the Max Time value) then the system is good to restart without the threat of an OVERWIND situation. OVERWIND is the only Automatically restarting fault condition.

All inverters low = 200 - This setting is not used
All inverters high = 250 - This setting is not used
All inverter high timer= 5 seconds This setting is not used
The inverter controls are set in the Inverter

Min Voltage = 250 V When the controller sees a value greater than 250 volt being produced from the Turbine, it says “I’m over producing and the turbine needs to turn slightly out of the wind”. This setting correlates with “Turn Out Degrees and Turn Out Time” settings from Yaw Control Settings page. (see picture below)

Max Voltage = 295 V
Once the AC Peak exceeds 295 Volts (Max Voltage setting) for 2 seconds (Turn Out Time setting), it will rotate 15 degrees (Turn out degrees) out of the wind. This will be seen on the controller main screen because the “Desired Orientation” direction indicator on the top right side (green arrow clock type thing) of the controller will say 165 or 195 degrees, indicating that the turbine no longer wants to be 180 degrees relative into the wind, but rather at a 15 degree off-set. The turbine will continue to turn out at 15 degree intervals as long as it continues to see AC volts >295. The system will wait 20 seconds (see pic below -Turn hold) between each attempt to turn farther out. That way it has a chance to see if the change in orientation has allowed the turbine to make 295 volts or less. see Min Voltage for more detail

Regulation window = 20 Volts is a setting that dictates to the controller when the turbine should be sending voltage to the dummy load and how much. When the turbine starts to over produce power (anything over Max Voltage) not only will it turn out, but it will send some voltage to the Resistive Load to aid in slowing the turbine down. Reg Window basically means that in a window of 20 volts from Max Voltage (in this case 295-315), the turbine will send 0-100% of the power being made to that Resistive load. So for instance, if it was 5 volts over 295 volts, 5 is 25% of 20, so it would send 25% of the power being made to the resistive load.

Over voltage = 350V Over voltage will shut down the system into an “OVERVOLT” fault, 90 degrees turn out and shut down the blades. The logic here is that “at 350v production, we have not been able to turn out far enough, and we are sending 100% of the power being produced back to the resistive loads to act as brakes, and we’re still over producing, we need to shutdown”. The system will shutdown and display an OVERVOLT fault and will not restart until someone manually restarts it using the E-Stop button.

Min Voltage = 250 Volts When the turbine turns out due to being over Max Voltage, for instance lets say its at 165 degrees, a 15 degree off set, when the turbine comes down below 250 V for the “Turn In Time” value from the Yaw Control setting page (see below), it will turn back towards the wind 5 degrees, which is the “Turn In Degree” value. The logic here is that “We’ve turned out due to over production, but now we are under producing because we are below 250 V so it must be safe to come back into the wind.” It will continue to turn back into the wind as long as the Voltage remains below 250V until to comes back to 180 degree orientation.

Max frequency = 30 Max Frequency measures revolutions, but it’s based on the AC Sine Waves coming from the turbine rather than blade rotations as you might assume. Basically, this does the same thing as Max Voltage. If the turbine sees rotation over a frequency of 30, it will begin to throw power again to the Resistive Load. There is no reg window for this setting, so it goes from 0-100% based on the gap between Max Freq and Over Freq. This acts as a secondary safety behind the braking it does based on voltage production.

Over frequency= 38 If the turbine ever hits a frequency of 38, it will go into an “OVERSPEED” fault and shutdown, 90 degrees out of the wind, blades stopped. This is also need a manual restart.

Phase balance= 50V This measures the difference in voltage between the phases. I believe that when there is a difference of 50 V between any two phases, the system shuts down and indicates that one of the Phases may be bad.

UPS restart = 120 second. Restart is used when there is a battery backup system (I don't have one) . If there is a grid failure, normally everything will shut off. Controller, Inverters, everything. The system won’t make power, but it won’t be able to turn out of the wind and change that orientation as the wind direction changes. With a Battery Backup system, the controller would still receive power, and be able to continue to turn the turbine to maintain a 90 degree off set orientation. The UPS Restart would say that it needs to see grid power for 2 minutes, it knows power is back and will restart the turbine.

The Yaw Control Settings Menu

46 KWH in one day!

2010-09-05T19:31:00.000-04:00

September is off to a good start!

We finally had wind and we made 46KWH in one day!

The one month results are in

2010-08-27T11:41:00.000-04:00

No drum roll please . . . Since National Grid was here July 27 – call that day 0, we are @ negative 67 kwh. Yes, when there is no wind, you use more power than you make. This month we’ve had a few windy days where we made some power, but we’ve had many more where there was no wind at all.

Where did I get the -67 KWH reading from? NYSERDA requires the installer to include a meter that measures power going to the grid. This meter goes both ways too. On a windy day it increases and on a no wind day is shows that we are using power from the grid to run the turbine. Unfortunalty, this month we've had a lot of no wind days.

This is a graph from a very close by weather station that shows the winds for August.

I emailed Re-driven to see if they are working on some adjustments in the newest controller software to cut down on the power usage during no wind days. Here is an example of what we were experiencing; We were eating dinner outside on our deck the other night. It was a summer evening without a drop of wind. While we ate, over about a 20 minutes period, the yaw motor turned the turbine twice. I’m assuming it takes a lot of power to move that heavy turbine head and there was no apparent reason to move it. Redriven asked that I move my wind start setting from 2 to 4. (see below pre -change) I just did this yesterday. Hopefully, that will cut down on running the yaw motor when there is no hope of making power.

I finally read the Aurora inverter owner’s manual. One thing I learned was how to set the currency to USD (US Dollars) from EUR (Euros). I like to think of myself as a citizen of the world, but I pay for most things at my house in USD. I’ve also learned how see th amount of power we’ve made in the last 30 days. This excludes the power used to run the wind turbine and associated equipment.

Inverter output

Inverter #1 97.6 kwh

Inverter #2 87.6 kwh

185.2 kwh

It makes sense that Inverter #1 has is reading more power. They are programed to have # 1 come on line first, only after it hits a threshold does # 2 go on line. This is to save power I believe.

Originally, I was using 9 cents per KWH when I calculated the pay back. Now that I further exam my bill for the exact cost it takes some calculation. The price of power is 6.4 cents per KWH. I get some renewable energy from Green Mountain for 1.6 cents extra charge and the delivery charge from National grid of 5.3 cents per KWH. Also some taxes and the SBC/RPS. This would put my real delivered cost at 15 cents per KWH. I’ll have to use this new figure when I figure out my payback again – after we get some wind.

Delivery 5.3
Delivery Adj. 0.983
Incr Stat Ass 0.307
SBC/RPS 0.594
Tax 0.14368

Electric supply 6.44
Renewable service 1.6
-----------------------------
Total cents per KWH 15.36768

That .59 cents SBC/RPS is the charge that helped NYSERDA pay for their portion of my wind turbine cost. Thank you to all of you that have paid for my wind turbine with your RSP charge for electricity use! I have no idea what Incr State Ass - is about.

So at the end of one month, I’m now $10.29 behind. We could turn off the turbine for “no wind” days, but then we might miss some wind when we are away from the house or in the middle of the night. Maybe by changing the wind start setting from 2-4 will help too.

I still have great hopes for September, when the winds should pick up and we’ll have fewer no wind days eating up my power. You can see from the Inverter stats I'm making power on windy days.

Stay tuned.

ReDriven's Windview Performance

2010-08-07T11:59:00.000-04:00

We had a few windy days in a row, so I was able to capture this from the WindView site. Unfortunately, the controller doesn't get data from the inverters, yet. I believe they said that was coming in another version of the controller. There is a place for the data from each inverter in the screen above. You can connect a laptop to the inverters and get a report on those too. The Inverter LCD screen gives you stats as well. So far, our peak output was 6,107 watts on each inverter. That means it can produce 12,214 watts, but that is right be for it shuts down to protect it's self from winds that are too strong. Soon it will be September and the wind will pick up again. I never thought I would be looking forward to the end of summer.

Let the measuring begin!

2010-07-29T19:25:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, National Grid installed their meter that goes both ways for Net Metering. With last night's winds we have now offically reduced our power bill by 11kwh last night.

Here is the digital meter. You can see what direction it is going by the way the LCD blinks.

10 days or less until I can connect to the grid!

2010-07-25T16:25:00.000-04:00

T-10 days until I’m okay to connect to National Grid. I got an email from National Grid Friday that they will be here in 10 business days or less to connect us to the grid.

A few weeks ago I had to sign the agreement Form K

Niagara Mohawk, d/b/a National Grid,Standardized Contract For Interconnection of New Distributed Generation Units of 2 MW or Less, to be Operated in Parallel, Form K

This form, in short, says that I agree that can disconnect me at any time they want . I can inturn disconnect from them too.

I had to spend another $ 150 dollars for an inspection of the wiring.

Here is the equipment wired in my garage. I guess it isn’t rocket science to figure out that all this equipment takes power to run, even when the wind is not blowing. So be prepared that if you start out in a low wind time of year you're going to use more than you produce just having the system running. You do have the option of just turning it off on days when you are sure that there will be no wind. Once I can turn the system on, I’ll let you know what wind speed is require to run the equipment without any power lost.

My wind turbine in operation

2010-07-17T15:39:00.000-04:00

The electrical inspector was here today so that we can connect to the grid. (someday). We had to power it up so he could see it running. It was a great windy day.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WF8g09jVZ0E

I've finally got it!

2010-07-03T19:21:00.000-04:00

Yes, the day I've been waiting for finally arrived. I've got my wind turbine and I love it. It is quiet and it makes power with the lightest of winds.

Here is part two of the Making for a Redriven Wind Turbine.

The video of the raising of the wind turbine didn't come out so great. Even with two camera angles.

New Narcell Cover.

2010-06-27T18:39:00.000-04:00

Here is the new Narcelle cover. This is the first one out of the factory. ReDriven and Rual Wind and Generation were here Thursday. They did the inverter and controller wiring and put on the cover. ReDriven and Rual Wind will be coming back Monday to put on the blades and hopefully get this in the air!

The blades have arrived

2010-06-19T04:09:00.000-04:00

My blades were delivered this week! The truck couldn't make it up our driveway so my husband had to deliver them to the turbine site in his Tacoma pickup.

The holes on the blades

Don't match the holes on the turbine

I called Redriven and they said the holes in the blades could be re-drilled to fit. Chris said that 4 holes fit, but I don't see that more than two would fit. He said we could get replacements later with the proper drillings.

Redriven was to call my installer to set up installation, but Rodney hadn't heard that from Redriven yet.

See my youtube video the Making of a wind turbine

2010-05-30T11:38:00.000-04:00

I just posted my youtube video

Check out how one of these is put together.

The making of a Redriven Wind Turbine

I asked Rural Bolt and Wind for an update on the shipment of the blades. They said they were waiting for an email from Redriven. It seems my installer will not be passing on info by word of mouth about what Redriven tells them. I believe that means we won’t be getting any up dates. It seems that Redriven doesn’t put anything in writing.

Finally! Some parts installed see my install page.

2010-05-23T20:12:00.000-04:00

Check out my new side page on the installation of my wind turbine. Don't get too excite yet still no blades.

See all the details on my Installation Page

Next week?

2010-05-15T11:11:00.000-04:00

My installer is having a hard time getting someone to rent the equipment that can lift this new heavy tower into place. Maybe next week? If anyone knows of a source for this in Upstate NY, let me know. I don't think it is a crane that is needed. The equipment just has to move the tower off the truck and hold it in place to be bolted.

Installation Next Week?

2010-05-09T15:48:00.000-04:00

My Installer says they are coming next week to put up my tower! Can I believe it?

As you can see I haven’t written in my blog for a long time. I was thoroughly discussed with this whole thing and thinking that I should have never done this. Two of my coworkers who ask me all the time “did you get your wind turbine yet?” Were sorry they asked when I started complaining to them. I realized the other day if only I had put my money in the stock market, it would have doubled by now. They told me that power generation companies always have in their contracts that the generator service providers must pay the cost of any down time or lost power. Doesn’t matter if the problem is late installation or malfunctions, if there is any down time they get paid for power lost. I didn’t expect this in my wildest dreams, but I did expect that if I’ve been waiting for a part since March that it would be delivered by now. Three months of lost power could pay for the cover to be Fedexed. Why was I waiting to get booked on the next slow boat from China? I decided to call the guy at the top. The very first person I called about Redriven almost 1.5 years ago was Christopher Grant, one of the owners of ReDriven.

I told Chris that I was totally discussed that I’ve after a year and a half, all I have is a block of cement. He said he thought that all my parts had been delivered in Feb. but he wasn’t sure if my blades had the right drilling and that he would call me back.

When he called back he told me that all my parts were there and that he just wasn’t sure if the blades had the right holes drilled. There was a change in the bolt pattern in the blades so they fit the flange. He said that he had a temporary cover that could be used until the new improved cover was delivered. The Controller card I was waiting for could be by-passed and the old controller system could be used until the new controller card could be installed. He told me (as he told many of you when you called about my web site) that they were completely re-designing the system one piece at a time. First the Controller was redesigned before I put in my order, then the blades (see blade issue blog ). Next they re-designed the tower because of failing FEA (Finite Element Analyses). Last the turbine itself – hence the missing cover (one last part to be built). He said that the generator was now NEMA class H winding rated at 180 degrees Celsius.

About an hour after he verified that all my parts were there and I was ready to be installed, Ginny Weaver called and said they are coming next week and they would call later and tell me more details about what day. They need to rent some equipment to assemble the tower.

Christopher told me about this YouTube video that shows the new system that I will be getting. This shows the complete new tower base.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46xwwEKRYMs

The second video is a turbine that my installer put up. It says 80 meters, but it is really 80feet. Shows the turbine and top of the tower.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl4QQx6HfYQ

You see the tower is now one large hydraulic instead of two, the Nacelle has a different shape. I think he said the blue is the temporary cover. The blades look more aero dynamic. Chris said they hired an experienced engineer from LM Glasfiber to design them.

I used to scan the Internet weekly for any new Redrive information, but since the New Year, I guess I gave up hope that this would ever really happen. I stopped looking. People that commented on this site and I couldn’t believe that I still had nothing yet one year and four months later.

As you can see from my blog my installer has been stringing me along with “just a couple of weeks” since July 09. Instead of just telling me last July when NYSERDA approved my project that the manufacture was redesigning the whole thing and that is wouldn’t come for many more months, he kept telling me it was going to be 3 more weeks. Then my turbine was delivered in Feb, he kept telling me a few more weeks. (Update 5-22-10 - my installer says that he was just telling me what ReDriven was telling him - read my May 22 blog and you will see why the installer seems more credible here than Redriven)

Redriven tells me they have a huge backlog of people waiting for their turbines. We are all in queue for a turbine with no published track record. I guess that is better than one with a poor track record. Redriven says that the new design is much more reliable. We hope they are right.

I guess that my installer didn’t want to do my installation because he knew he would have to make a return trip or two when the real cover and controller came in. Which means a long drive for him and his crew. I guess I’ll have to hear his side of this. Truth is always better in the long run.

Chris Grant says the people at NYSERDA have always been updated on what was happening. I guess that is why they were not concerned about how long this was taking. They did call me about a month ago checking up on what was happening. They said they wanted to see if everyone is getting the same story.

Chris Grant from Redriven told me that they are submitting for the small wind certification and they’re seeing a much more reliable system with the new design. He said that updating the web site hasn’t been a priority for them. I guess it wouldn’t be a priority to let everyone know there is no history on the new turbine and they are fresh off the design bench.

De ja vu

2010-03-30T19:54:00.000-04:00

More waiting . . . My installer told me now we are waiting for controller cards. This will take a few more weeks. Is it still called déjà vu when you think you have heard something 4 or 5 times before?

Waiting for Installaton

2010-03-06T11:49:00.000-05:00

More waiting! The snowstorm has gotten my installer behind schedule on the installs. He has put together one tower, but found that he is missing a head cover part, which could take a few more weeks to get.

Luckily, I didn’t count on the turbine being installed right away, so I renewed my building permit for another year. Let’s hope it goes in before Feb 2011!
I did make progress on the insurance front. By getting all my insurance through Nation Wide I was able to get a policy for the wind turbine and save money on my car and homeowners policy. Switching insurance companies is a real pain however. I just couldn’t stay with a company that would have cancelled my policy because I had a wind turbine on the same property as my house. I was just reading the mounds of paperwork. It seems I'm covered for Vandalism and Lighting strike with a huge deductable. I’m not covered for wind damage, earthquake,or volcanoes or nuclear bombs .

Turbine coming and insurance issues

2010-02-06T09:37:00.000-05:00

I got a call from Rural Wind and Electric, they say the container is out of customs and will be delivered on Monday to their office.

Early this week, I didn't want to get my hopes up, but it appeared that I might get a turbine soon. So I gave my insurance agent a call. This summer when I thought my turbine would be coming soon ;) I called my insurance company and it was only going to be a few dollars on to my policy to add an “appurtenant structure” to the policy.

This time, however, it occurred to me that the wind turbine is really on a separate piece of land so there might be an issue with putting it on my homeowners policy.

The agent called today and said it is a good thing that the turbine is not on the same land. If it were, they would have to cancel my policy. There name, so you can avoid them, is Peerless Insurance.

He said they could write a liability policy for the land, as its own plot. He said that as long as there is a chance (Very small chance) that we might get a check back from National Grid that it is commercial not personal. Also, we should put a fence around it to keep out unwanted visitors too. We had a fence, but took it down when they started constructing the foundation. I guess we’ll need to put that back up.

It would be really bad to pay for insurance and find out after an event that you were really not covered, but I don’t want to over pay either.

My installer says the All State will put it in a home owners policy. But it looks like I'll need a separate policy for my land. I'd like to get more than just liability too.

Wind turbine will be delivered soon

2010-01-14T19:32:00.001-05:00

I got a call from Rural Wind and Electric. They said my wind turbine and tower are in Newark NJ!

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

2009-11-01T14:58:00.000-05:00

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

2009-11-01T13:53:00.000-05:00

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

2009-10-30T06:21:00.000-04:00

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!

2009-10-27T20:58:00.001-04:00

The digging begins for the foundation of our wind turbine.

Still no digging

2009-10-24T09:26:00.000-04:00

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

2009-09-27T11:17:00.000-04:00

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

2009-08-28T09:54:00.000-04:00

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!

2009-08-22T08:35:00.000-04:00

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

2009-08-02T17:27:00.000-04:00

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

2009-08-01T11:18:00.000-04:00

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

2009-07-25T07:27:00.000-04:00

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

2009-07-11T11:03:00.000-04:00

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

2009-05-30T07:18:00.000-04:00

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?

2009-04-26T18:59:00.000-04:00

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

2009-04-19T15:28:00.000-04:00

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?

2009-04-04T18:09:00.000-04:00

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?

2009-03-15T19:25:00.000-04:00

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

2009-02-26T20:32:00.000-05:00

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

2009-02-22T19:30:00.000-05:00

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

2009-02-15T11:34:00.000-05:00

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

2009-02-12T20:14:00.001-05:00

Small Wind I'm really doing it

2009-02-08T19:21:00.000-05:00

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.