On Oct 24, 2019  we had a 40 mph wind gust that caused the turbine to furl and it got stuck. The guy we bought it from said that was the only thing wrong with it, that it gets stuck in the furling position occasionally.

  We had beautiful weather on Saturday so we took it down to unstick it, plus to see if we could figure out why it was stuck.   I googled it and I does seem to be a known issue with the South West. They found it to be furling bearing friction.  But when we inspected it, it was still well greased and moving fine. But it seems there is a point you can reach that it sticks in the furled position.  There is a rubber pad that seems to be there to stop it from going that far, but I suspect it is worn down.  We improvised by epoxying a metal washer on top of the pad, hoping that the washer will stop the furling from going too far.    The turbine is back up and running fine so far. I guess we will see when he next high winds come if our kluge of a repair worked. 

The hydraulics on the tower were very slow raising and lowering the tower, it took about twice as long as usual. 

Now for some stats old vs new wind turbine

I'm happy to report the SouthWest wind turbine is running great.


It doesn't make nearly has much power as the Redriven when it is windy, but the south west spins in lower wind speeds and it doesn't use any power to find the wind.  The Redriven in the summer,  used more power looking for wind than it made. The yaw motor would rotate back and forth looking for the perfect direction, which it seems in the summer is a fools errand except in storms.

The the dedicated meter says 57 kWh since January ( but we were down part of Jan, Feb and March the best months)

the Aurora inverters say we have made 60 kwh since Jan 1.  I believe the discrepancy is that we had our water pump plugged into the wind turbine outlet for a while. This makes the meter move in the opposite direction.   I asked my husband to move it so we would have an accurate measurement.

The peak power made with the South West was 1426 watts.  ( unfortunately just a spike durning a storm that doesn't happen often but not bad for a 1K turbine)

It is not true that the South west doesn't use any power. There is a very small voltage needed to keep the relay closed, this is to monitor when the grid goes down it opens the relay to shunt the turbine so no stray wind voltage is sent back to the grid.

We have been connected to the grid for 9 years this month.

The Aurora inverter is showing a life time reading of  4067 KWH.  With the Redriven we used to run two inverters.  So the total lifetime power the 10K Redriven would be ~ 8000 kwhs.

A few difficulties with the new Turbine but we are up and running again.

The wind turbine ran for about 3 weeks in Dec/Jan, without any issues.  One day my husband heard a strange noise and notice that one of the blades was not strait.

We put it in shut down mode and waited for a day in Jan that was not horrible to bring down the tower. One of the screw holes in the CAM ( the part the at the blades attach to ) was stripped.

I had to order a new part ( luckily there is a place that sells them still) but it set me back another 300 dollars and took about 2 months to arrive. Then we realized that we needed new bolts too, since they were stripped too.  That took another week or so.

In early April we were finally back in business. Totally missing March the best wind month of the year.

I'm really happy with the South West Whisper 200 .  It spins with just the slightest breeze and is really quiet. The Redriven  tower is totally over kill, but at least the tower is no longer wasted.
It gives me pleasure to see it spinning almost all of the time now.

Next time I'll tell you about how much power we are making.  Be prepared to be underwhelmed with the total, but peak power was way over expectations.

We're Back!

We're back in the wind!

. . . Only on a much smaller scale

I've been wanting to replace the Redriven turbine but my daughter will be in college for a while so I can't throw too much more money in my wind hobby.   I set up ebay and Craigs list searches for wind turbines within driving distance.

In July, I saw a wind turbine on eBay for Sale only a few miles from my house and bought it.

Its a 1K Southwest Whisper 200 HV.   Unfortunately the HV ( High Voltage 240V ) model is quiet obscure an the manual doesn't cover that model at all.

So it has taken a while and a village to get all the info an parts  together to get it going again.

Our neighbor Matt, who is a farmer and and expert with Hydraulics helped us make sure the the tower wasn't going to come crashing down on us after many years of not being used.

We hired Scott Fouts from (QED) an ex Redriven employee to help us with the conversion from the complex wiring of the ReDriven set up to the basic  South West Wind set up. Scott also remotely dialed in to configure the Inverters.

Rob from Greenpowertalk.org guided us in getting the measurements and calculated the power curve for the Whisper 200 model.

My husband hired an Amish company down the road to weld the part that my husband  designed on CAD  to convert from the Redriven mount to an new Schedule 40 pole that the South west requires.

And I did what I do best, gently nudged (nagged) everyone to do their part.


The wind started today Dec 29th and after a little troubleshooting, it is making power! Not a lot of power but we are now out of the lawn ornament category now.

Here is the spec for the tower for those who want to try to put a new head on it.



https://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&pid=sites&srcid=ZGVmYXVsdGRvbWFpbnxzdXN0YWluaW5nd2luZHBvd2VyfGd4OjIzZDQ3NTRlNzMxNTI2NmQ

Does anyone have the spec for the 10K tower turbine mounting connection?

It as been a long time! 

Does anyone have the specs for the Redriven mounting system.  Several people are looking for a  drawings that show the number, size and bolt circle for the tower-to-turbine connection of the Redriven-10K.

Can anyone share that info?

If you are a former Redriven owner or employee, I promise not to tell where I got the info if you send it to me.

Warning about flange and structural cracking on the original installed

These pictures were provided by the maintenance staff at Presentation Sisters in Aberdeen, SD.
Safety Maintenance Alert Turbine Model: RPI 20kW with original "Flat Root" blades and original blade flange. These pictures are of a weld failure on the original installed flange and structural cracking on the original installed blades. The system has been running since April 2013 with a QED control system. It was lowered for routine annual maintenance.
QED recommends an immediate system stop and inspection of any systems in operation that are using original RPI blade Components. It is our opinion that these original installed blades and flange represent a safety concern.
*please note that systems running Round Root bladesets should also be inspected.
Please contact Scott Fouts of QED Wind Power with any questions.
scott@QEDWINDPOWER.com
These pictures were provided by the maintenance staff at Presentation Sisters in Aberdeen, SD.

Redriven owners - Scott sent a bunch of pictures but this one was the one that said it all to me.  If you have a redriven that is still running, be sure to inspect the blades for cracks.