Thanksgiving day

Happy Thanksgiving United States readers! I’m very thankful that both Rural Wind & and Electric (Rodney and James) plus Redriven (Dave and Scott) were here for the last two days working hard to resolve the issues with our wind turbine. They replaced a cable that was 6 wire unshielded with a cable with 2 shields and 2 twisted pair cable. This cable replacement significantly reduced the noise and raised the control signal. Dave from Redriven also programed some checks (firmware 2.05) so the system will automatically reset on the over-speed error that we just started getting.

Now our wind turbine is back making power better than ever. Since they left yesterday, we have had no errors at all. Plus now at 3.75 miles per hour the meter stands still (no gain no loss). If you remember, with the older system, the meter stood still at 8 miles per hour. This means that when the wind turbine is slowly turning we will now have a net gain rather than a loss. The parasitic loss is now about 300 watts, we think it was about 600 –to 800 watts with the older control system. This should do great things for our power production.

Installation Next Week?

My Installer says they are coming next week to put up my tower! Can I believe it?


As you can see I haven’t written in my blog for a long time. I was thoroughly discussed with this whole thing and thinking that I should have never done this. Two of my coworkers who ask me all the time “did you get your wind turbine yet?” Were sorry they asked when I started complaining to them. I realized the other day if only I had put my money in the stock market, it would have doubled by now. They told me that power generation companies always have in their contracts that the generator service providers must pay the cost of any down time or lost power. Doesn’t matter if the problem is late installation or malfunctions, if there is any down time they get paid for power lost. I didn’t expect this in my wildest dreams, but I did expect that if I’ve been waiting for a part since March that it would be delivered by now. Three months of lost power could pay for the cover to be Fedexed. Why was I waiting to get booked on the next slow boat from China? I decided to call the guy at the top. The very first person I called about Redriven almost 1.5 years ago was Christopher Grant, one of the owners of ReDriven.

I told Chris  that I was totally discussed that I’ve after a year and a half, all I have is a block of cement. He said he thought that all my parts had been delivered in Feb. but he wasn’t sure if my blades had the right drilling and that he would call me back.

When he called back he told me that all my parts were there and that he just wasn’t sure if the blades had the right holes drilled. There was a change in the bolt pattern in the blades so they fit the flange. He said that he had a temporary cover that could be used until the new improved cover was delivered. The Controller card I was waiting for could be by-passed and the old controller system could be used until the new controller card could be installed. He told me (as he told many of you when you called about my web site) that they were completely re-designing the system one piece at a time. First the Controller was redesigned before I put in my order, then the blades (see blade issue blog ). Next they re-designed the tower because of failing FEA (Finite Element Analyses). Last the turbine itself – hence the missing cover (one last part to be built). He said that the generator was now NEMA class H winding rated at 180 degrees Celsius.

About an hour after he verified that all my parts were there and I was ready to be installed, Ginny Weaver called and said they are coming next week and they would call later and tell me more details about what day. They need to rent some equipment to assemble the tower.

Christopher told me about this YouTube video that shows the new system that I will be getting. This shows the complete new tower base.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46xwwEKRYMs

The second video is a turbine that my installer put up. It says 80 meters, but it is really 80feet. Shows the turbine and top of the tower.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jl4QQx6HfYQ

You see the tower is now one large hydraulic instead of two, the Nacelle has a different shape. I think he said the blue is the temporary cover. The blades look more aero dynamic. Chris said they hired an experienced engineer from LM Glasfiber to design them.

I used to scan the Internet weekly for any new Redrive information, but since the New Year, I guess I gave up hope that this would ever really happen. I stopped looking. People that commented on this site and I couldn’t believe that I still had nothing yet one year and four months later.


As you can see from my blog my installer has been stringing me along with “just a couple of weeks” since July 09. Instead of just telling me last July when NYSERDA approved my project that the manufacture was redesigning the whole thing and that is wouldn’t come for many more months, he kept telling me it was going to be 3 more weeks. Then my turbine was delivered in Feb, he kept telling me a few more weeks. (Update 5-22-10 - my installer says that he was just telling me what ReDriven was telling him - read my May 22 blog and you will see why the installer seems more credible here than Redriven)


Redriven tells me they have a huge backlog of people waiting for their turbines. We are all in queue for a turbine with no published track record. I guess that is better than one with a poor track record.  Redriven says that the new design is much more reliable. We hope they are right.

I guess that my installer didn’t want to do my installation because he knew he would have to make a return trip or two when the real cover and controller came in. Which means a long drive for him and his crew. I guess I’ll have to hear his side of this. Truth is always better in the long run.

Chris Grant says the people at NYSERDA have always been updated on what was happening. I guess that is why they were not concerned about how long this was taking. They did call me about a month ago checking up on what was happening. They said they wanted to see if everyone is getting the same story.

Chris Grant from Redriven told me that they are submitting for the small wind certification and they’re seeing a much more reliable system with the new design. He said that updating the web site hasn’t been a priority for them. I guess it wouldn’t be a priority to let everyone know there is no history on the new turbine and they are fresh off the design bench.

Waiting for Installaton

  More waiting! The snowstorm has gotten my installer behind schedule on the installs. He has put together one tower, but found that he is missing a head cover part, which could take a few more weeks to get.


Luckily, I didn’t count on the turbine being installed right away, so I renewed my building permit for another year. Let’s hope it goes in before Feb 2011!
I did make progress on the insurance front. By getting all my insurance through Nation Wide I was able to get a policy for the wind turbine and save money on my car and homeowners policy. Switching insurance companies is a real pain however. I just couldn’t stay with a company that would have cancelled my policy because I had a wind turbine on the same property as my house. I was just reading the mounds of paperwork. It seems I'm covered for Vandalism and Lighting strike with a huge deductable. I’m not covered for wind damage, earthquake,or volcanoes or nuclear bombs .

Turbine coming and insurance issues

I got a call from Rural Wind and Electric, they say the container is out of customs and will be delivered on Monday to their office.

Early this week, I didn't want to get my hopes up, but it appeared that I might get a turbine soon. So I gave my insurance agent a call. This summer when I thought my turbine would be coming soon ;) I called my insurance company and it was only going to be a few dollars on to my policy to add an “appurtenant structure” to the policy.

This time, however, it occurred to me that the wind turbine is really on a separate piece of land so there might be an issue with putting it on my homeowners policy.

The agent called today and said it is a good thing that the turbine is not on the same land. If it were, they would have to cancel my policy. There name, so you can avoid them, is Peerless Insurance.

He said they could write a liability policy for the land, as its own plot. He said that as long as there is a chance (Very small chance) that we might get a check back from National Grid that it is commercial not personal. Also, we should put a fence around it to keep out unwanted visitors too. We had a fence, but took it down when they started constructing the foundation. I guess we’ll need to put that back up.

It would be really bad to pay for insurance and find out after an event that you were really not covered, but I don’t want to over pay either.

My installer says the All State will put it in a home owners policy. But it looks like I'll need a separate policy for my land. I'd like to get more than just liability too.

Wind turbine will be delivered soon

I got a call from Rural Wind and Electric. They said my wind turbine and tower are in Newark NJ!

Last steps in the foundation for our Re-driven 10k wind turbine

The last step of building the foundation is taking the forms off and the dirt is pushed back.

Now were back to waiting. First, waiting for the cement to cure and then for the tower and turbine to arrive.

Rodney from Rual Bolt Generation and Wind says the parts will be coming in about 4-7 weeks. He said he would try to do a better job at keeping us up-to-date on what is happening.

The next layer of the foundation

The next layer is made with forms that sit above the underground base.

The top layer of the foundation contains the bolts that that support the tower. The tallest pipes are conduit that will hold the electric cable coming down from the top of the tower and come out under ground to connect to the house.

The digging begins!

The digging begins for the foundation of our wind turbine.

Getting ready for the tower and cabling

This week the people that place little flags to mark the electric and phone lines will be coming. This is to make sure that we don’t dig in the wrong area for the wind turbine foundation and the underground cables to attach to the inverter.

It is also time to get insurance. I talked to my insurance company back in February when I started this project.

One article on the net that I found helpful on insurance was this one by Mick Sagrillo, Sagrillo Power & Light


http://www.awea.org/smallwind/sagrillo/ms_insur2.html


We’ll need insurance for an “appurtenant structure” and possibly liability insurance (which we already have). From what I’ve read so far, it seems New York State doesn’t allow utilities to require liability insurance.

More info on Redriven the company

I found this interesting article from AgriNews about Redriven – it is old, but I had never seen it before. This gives a little more info about the company.

http://www.agrinewsinteractive.com/fullstory.htm?ArticleID=9835&ShowSection=Front%20Page

My installer Rodney Weaver from Rural Generation and Bolt is quoted too.

NYSERDA approval has arrived

Great news! I’ve got my NYSERDA approval. We could start poring cement, but I’d still like to find out how much more it would cost to go up 20 feet or ever 40 more feet. I wanted at least 100 feet in the beginning, but they didn’t make a 100-foot hydraulic tower then. They do now.

My installer doesn't have the pricing for the higher towers yet. They’ve got it for the 20KW but not for my 10KW. Just another week and ½, but that is what they have been saying for a month or so. I think what I’ll do is talk to my town about what it will take to amend my permit to cover up to 120ft just in case I can afford to go the extra feet.

It really means a lot to the projected energy out put. Here are the stats the NYSERDA’s way of measuring.

With an 80 ft tower I could produce 41.1 KWH daily
With a 100 ft tower 52.7 KWH daily almost 28% more
With a 120 ft tower 63.6 KWH daily 55% more power

If power was 10 cent a kW the power I’d be producing would be 4.11 dollar per day with the 80ft tower or 5.27 per day.

I’d have to go back to NYSERDA to get there approval again for the higher tower. I’m not sure how many more months we’d be waiting. They give more money based on tower height. Also, the Federal tax credit is uncapped so I’d get 30% back on the added expense of the extra feet.

It is a very windy day today. Wish I had my wind turbine up and spinning.

How did I pick a Redriven Wind Turbine with Rural Generation and Wind as an installer?

It all started years ago, when my husband and I started to realize that our passive solar house built in the 70s was not cutting it. On sunny days, we were warm – sometimes too hot, but on subzero and cloudy winter days, we were really cold. We have a woodstove and that helped. Unfortunately, we were paying a lot of money to run blowers that sort of warmed the house at night. We had all the work and dirt that a woodstove offers as well. Also, my husband has mold and dust mite allergies so blowing air around is not good for him. To sum it up our passive solar heating was not working for us.

We decided to look at other green alternatives. We found the list of NYSERDA installers

At that time there were only a hand full of Authorized Installers to choose from and we pick Gay Canough, ETM Solar Works because she was close. She came out to our house and for a fee gave us a price for Solar and for wind. They were both crazy prices with ~20 year paybacks. I think Solar was $110K and Wind was going to be about $60K and the incentives didn't help much. She said wind was the best for our situation, but at that time (I guess 4-6 years ago?) NYSERDA limited you to 10KW turbine. She could sell us a Bergey 10K but only one turbine with the NYS incentives and we would need another one to cover all of our needs with only a little or no incentive money, so two turbines two towers! We knew this was crazy so needless to say we did jump at this offer.

About two years ago, we looked at using Geothermal heating, but that had a huge cost. It would take a lot of construction on our house to deliver the heat to each room. What we really needed was supplemental heat on non-sunny days – and electric does that pretty well. Heating each room when needed- but also includes a big bill from the electric company for Dec, Feb and March.

I kept my eye on the powernaturally site and finally, NYS opened up the eligible list to turbines larger than 10K and had 20KW turbines in the approved list. I bought the Paul Gipe book Wind Power. I’m on my third pass through it – every time – I know more and so I’m able to get more out of it.

In reading Paul Gipe's book, it was clear that you should by the biggest turbine and tower that you can afford. That it is not worth putting up a big tower unless you had a decent size wind turbine to put on it. Something that was intuitive to me, but now with expert advice I was now certain that I needed a 20KW turbine. Going back to the list, there are only a few eligible installers that will do a system over 10KW. I called back and emailed several times ETM to see if they did 20kw turbins. ETM is the company that gave us that first estimate. After about two months, I finally got someone to answer the phone. They didn’t have a copy of our old estimate and they also said they were concentrating now on the solar side. Wind was just to much pain. Towns were not giving permits and or neighbors were making it hard to install. Solar was just much easier. I guess they didn’t need the wind business because they were too busy to answer the phone or the constant emails.


So I started my campaign to see if I could get any of the installers eligible for over 10k to call or email me back. They do not answer phone calls or emails – with the exception of two.

Daniel Roy from Renovus Energy, Inc. called me right back. Unfortunately, he only had a 5K or a 50K, way to small or way to big. We discussed my situation for a long time (for free). He was the first to tell me about that First Look site (see my blog posting on how to measure the wind). The 50KW he sells sounds great, but was just too expensive for one homeowner to afford. I considered a coop with neighboors, but I didn’t think I had the time to take on something like that.

Next, I found a new person on the list – he was from ReDriven Inc. http://www.redriven.net/
I Called Christopher Grant and went right to his cell phone and he said he worked for the Manufacture ReDriven, but he gave me the name of someone that he had just trained as an installer near us and who was on the NYSERDA list. I must have over looked his name before, because his last name was Weaver. I must have emailed and call Art Weaver 20 times and he never answered, but Rodney Weaver from Rural Generation and Wind had a receptionist! Who could make an appointment to come over in less than a week! So I made that appointment.

I told a friend at work what I was up to, she said her husband has been trying to get any of the wind installers to call him back as well – he was excited to hear that someone was returning calls.

So on Martin Luther King Day, Rodney came over. I told him I was interested in the 20K turbine. He opened up his computer and checked out the FirstWind site too. He said we had more that he expected. So, he figured out the price of the 20k turbine. It was way too much – I don’t remember exactly – I think my part would be in the ~$48,000 range. He looked at our electric bills. It showed how much power we used and what the buy back rate would be if we had extra. He put our average wind speed in the Redriven power calculator and it showed that we would be able to produce enough with their 10KW turbine to meet our energy needs with a tad left over. He also told us that with the 10KW you could get a monopole tower with hydraulic tilting tower, so that you don’t need a crane for maintenance. He said the crane would cost $2,000 per day to bring the 20k Turbine down for maintenance. At that point my husband and I were convinced we really didn’t want a 20KW. Rodney didn’t tell us this but it was apparent that a crane cost, would cut a minimum of 2K out of the payback schedule per year for maintenance- if we were lucky. He said that for the first 5 years the warrantee covered the repairs and parts. I asked if a longer warrantee was available, but a longer term is not available yet.

Rodney explained the turbine is made in China and the Electronic controlling and grid connection components are made in Canada. There is a five-year warrantee. He told us what the installation involved. We would have the electronic parts in our garage and the turbine needed to be less than 300 feet from the house so that we didn’t have a lot of power loss on the electric cable.


Rural Generation and Wind is new to the wind business. http://www.ruralgenerationandwind.com/
I think they said they have installed about ~ 8 systems. I forget where exactly- not in NYS but I believe some in Maine and Canada. They are not new to the normal gas generator business, that people would have in their homes for power outages.

We walked around outside to decide on the best spot. He said he if could sell us the Bergey 10KW too, but it wouldn’t give us enough power to meet our needs. We knew that from our investigation into Bergey years ago.

Next I went into heavy-duty web searching mode to see what I could find out about the company’s. There is not a lot out there. That is one of the reasons I wanted to create this blog. I would have really liked to hear more from others who have taken to plunge and that have real life results. If you are out there please let me know.
I’ll post more on my investigation on another day.