Decembers Results

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?

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

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

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.

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

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

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?

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

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!

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!

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

Were making power again!

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

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!

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!

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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!

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?

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

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^th we 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

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 :(

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

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

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.