Storm Warnings for your Wind Turbine

Sorry it has been so long.  My Job that pays has been taking up more than it's fair share of my life. I promise more posts later this month.   My turbine is still spinning ( knock on wood sound effect) . 

FYI - if there is a storm coming - Turn off your Wind turbine. If the power goes off while in a wind gust you are very much in danger of losing control of the turbine.  The physical breaks alone can't stop the blades at the highest speeds.

Calling all ReDriven Wind Turbine Owners . . .

Introducing

Sustaining Your ReDriven  (Our new Website)

Redriven is no long going to provide any support or parts, so it is time for us to work together to keep our turbines going.  I've started a new collaborative site called "Sustaining your ReDriven."

Just send me your email address if you would like to be a contributor or if let me know if you have a question / answer and I can post it for you.

Scott Fouts scott.fouts@yahoo.com has offered to help with the answers. He was a one of if not the best Redriven tech.  He is willing to help people get their Redriven wind turbines going.  Of course for time and materials.

So far I've got a few questions, and even fewer answers but it is start!  You're are not alone with your very large lawn ornament there is hope.


Let me know what you think!

Wind turbine One Year Results 2,957 KWH

This our second year as a wind turbine owners, but our first year running constantly. 

The total produced for the year was 2,957KWH.

Here is graph of the power by month.

Here is the wind for that same year broken two 1/2 2011 and 1/2 2012
This was not a great year for wind as you can see below.

Some support options Redriven owners

Mark Mayhew from NYSERDA New York State Energy Research and Development Authority stopped by Thursday evening. He said there are two vendors nearby that will service Redriven wind turbines for time and materials.


Alternative Power Solutions of NY, LLC
http://www.apsofny.com/
Northwood Business Center, suite 101
6780 Northern Blvd
East Syracuse, NY 13029
Owen Pugh or Conor Kays
315.314.6930
ophugh@apsfny.com


And

Pyrus Energy, Inc.
2737 Erie Drive
Weedsport, NY 13166
James Marshal
315-834-6687
info@pyrusenergy.com

May Results

Here are the results for the May

161KWH
Average wind speed 6.2 mph

Selling Redriven Parts?  Let me know what you are selling.

Rumors Run Rampant about Redriven

Sorry readers, my job (that pays)  has been consuming every waking moment for the last three weeks and I totally missed all the Redriven news.

My first clue was that my husband noticed that his best Redriven Contact Dave V. the programmer was no longer working for Redriven on Linked in.

The Mark Mayhew (NYSERDA)  emailed me that there was a recall for some hubs and some people were asked to stop their turbines. He asked if we were one of them. We haven't heard anything yet.

Then today, I logged into my wind turbine email and yikes!  Many emails telling me the Redriven is no longer answering the phone and the website is down.

Check this out http://www.ripoffreport.com/building-products/orenda-energy/orenda-energy-redriven-power-cb1e1.htm

April - Great for Wind but Not So Great Results.

I thought April was going to be a great month. The average wind speed  was 11.4 mph . It seemed we had more wind in april than all winter. 
We had an up grade to version 3.59  ~ april 15th
Out put this month   353KWH for the month
the inverters produced 447KWh

April Fools Day Results

Another month with very little wind.  When there was wind, it was gusty with low averages.

Power made this month 307 KWH

Windview software

People have asked about the wind view software. Originally, it didn't do very much but now that the inverters are attached it is getting more useful. You need to run it from a Opera web browser. It will not run on ie8 or ie9 but will run on an iPhone.  We were able to restart the turbine when we were away on a windy weekend. After the wind turbine shuts down from over wind it needs a manual restart, which we could do from an iPhone.

Green on the graph is the wind speed and yellow is the power out. You can see from the graph that high wind does not always = higher power out. It seems the sweet spot is 8 meters per second.

Best output so far

NYSERDA gave me the okay to do my reporting at the end of the month rather than on the 27th.  Feb. is the perfect month to make the switch.

This month the wind picked up.  Too much wind last weekend.  Those peak wind speeds = turbine shut down.  The wind was an average of 8.5MPH for the month.  Power made 432KWH

During the really strong winds the noise came back, it must be the breaks. But over all, it is still much  quieter now that the hub has been tightened.

Our Nuts Were Tightened!

Yeah!  Redriven came this week and tightened down all of our bolts. The tech said that just about everything was loose.  I guess vibration will do that.  He said the hub nut tightened down about ½ inch. There was another term the tech used to describe what he did to keep it from coming loose that they do now – tapped it or tinned it?  Does anyone know what they do?  I know someone that commented a while back talked about welding it or something like that so it couldn’t come loose again.

This year is such a freak year.  There is so little wind, that I had to wait two days to see the turbine even move after repair. Last night we got some good wind and I could hear a marked improvement in the sound the turbine was making. We didn't get the highest winds, but it sounded healthy for a change.   Let the winds come!

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

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

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?

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.