Sunday, June 30, 2013

It is time to move on . . .but what next?

It is time to move on.   We are tired of looking at a non working wind turbine.

Has anyone out there put a new Nacelle on the Redriven tower?

What did you do?  How did it go?

Has anyone been able to get a 10KW Redriven going?  I know Scott has some 20KW going now, but any 10KW working out there?


Looking at the options

Monday, May 6, 2013

WARNING for Long board users - The Long Board is not safe to run

Anyone running the long board version of the Redriven wind turbine should read the warning below from Scott Fouts.

------------Letter from Scott ---------
There have been continuing failures of Redriven's long board controller over the past year - you have experienced your own issues.   Many of the failures I've been made aware of are much more significant in nature, and are cause for concern.  Some of the machines began experiencing capacitor failures, which can be explosive.   Recently it seems that catastrophic failures, such as capacitor explosions and inverter failures are more the norm instead of random.

I am recommending that anyone running the Redriven long board "C" system shut them down.   In my professional opinion, to continue operating them is not safe.

As you know, I have been working on a control system to retrofit into existing Redriven machines.   As of today there are several of these systems running flawlessly.   At this point only 20kW machines have been retrofitted with the new "Phoenix" controller, but it is designed to work with other sizes as well.

There are still options for most of the systems out there.  Initially it's important to get the word out that running the machines on the long board "C" controller isn't safe.

-----------End of Scott's letter -----------



Anyone that would like to talk to Scott about the issues or his solution can contact him at scott.fouts@yahoo.com or call him at 740-601-3959


We have the long board installed but there is no concern since it is completely shut down.  We have a blown controller board in the head and the bearing are shot.  Is there anyone out there still running that hasn't worked with Scott?  Is anyone out there selling there Redriven parts? We are trying to decide what to do next. I'd love to hear what others are doing.  Sorry it has been so long since I've updated the site.



Friday, March 15, 2013

Can't spin in the right direction

We took the entire break assembly off and the turbine still does not move in the direction the wind would take it without brute force.  It does move freely in the opposite direction however.

On the next nice day we are going to attempt to turn the blades around and see if we can squeeze a few more KWH out of it in the reverse direction.



Does anyone have any other low or no cost  ideas?

Sunday, January 6, 2013

Clanking noise problem followed by no rotation of blades



 We’ve had the weirdest problem lately. The wind turbine starts making a clanking noise and then when wind dies off it won’t start again without taking the tower down.  Once the tower is down, everything seems good with breaks off blades turn freely.  Once back up and running a while, clanking/scrapping noise comes back.   Strange thing this is that you would think clanking would be worse at high speed rotation, but it seems to be less frequent or loud at high speeds. 

For a few days were were getting a blank white screen on the HMI too, but power cycling it seemed to fix it for while. 

Anyone have any ideas what it could be causing this noise?  Scott said if it was the bearings the noise would track with the speed of rotation, but it does not.  Each time we take it down, it looks okay in side. After being down it works again for a while.

Right now the HMI shows all is well, it is tracking wind, breaks are off, but the blades will not turn at all no matter what the wind speed is.

We’ll take it down again when we get a chance and we’ll video tape the clanking noise.

December  results were terrible due to this issue.

Dec      28 KWH
Nov     138 KWH
Oct      200 KWH