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.

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

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.

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?

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

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.