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

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. 

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!

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

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.

Redriven gets a new investor

http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/partner/redriven-power-inc/news/article/2010/12/new-capital-investment-boosts-canadian-wind-turbine-company





Good news, Redriven has a new investor to help the business grow. It says that Redriven is "positioned as the 6th largest small wind manufacturer worldwide based on kW of sales".

November Results

This month the wind turbine was down more than up but in the last two days we have made more power than we did last month. The new Redriven system seems to be much better at reducing the parasitic power needed to just keep the system up.



This month the production meter that tracks the power that we can use read 85KWH.  51 KWH were produced  just yesterday.

The inverts combined for the month made 131 KWH. I believe a lot of that power was used to raise and lower the tower. I think we lowered and raised the tower about 5 times this month. I'm not exactly sure how much power that uses but with the weight of that tower if has to be significate.


Here is the wind chart  from a neighborhood weather station. We missed a bunch of great wind days this month but last two days were really windy.

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.

Redriven was here this week.

Redriven was here Tuesday and Wednesday this week. They got the wind turbine running Tuesday afternoon but night we started getting contiunous nacelle faults.  The next day they came back but couldn't get the errors to stop.  They now think the wiring between the controller and the nacelle is picking up interference.  They said they would be back this coming week to work on it again. I think replacing the controller cable to the nacelle.   It kills me that we are missing all of this great wind, this would have been the best month ever.

We're off line again

The wind turbine worked for about two days.  As luck would have it no wind days.  On the third day a little wind and we got a Nacelle fault.  Resetting it got it working again for a whole day.   The next day we got a DV error (Dog Vane- I think?) and then another Nacelle fault.  We have been unable to get it started back up.  The anemometer shows no wind even when there is wind.  So now we have everything turn off and are waiting for the next fix.

Windturbine back on line

Parker came back Wednesday afternoon and work past dark getting our wind turbine running again. He put in another external power supply in the nacell. Of course since that time there has been no wind at all to test it out.  Hopefully, there will be some tomorrow.



October Results

Unfortunately, this  months results were worse than last month – Only 49KWH.   I can't give you the amount of power the Inverters made  this month, since they need to be powered up to get the stats. The inverters have been off for the last few days.  As you can see from the weather chart, there were some good wind gusts, but we missed a lot of days too.

This month we had a couple of issues with the wind turbine. My job (that pays) has been very busy, so I haven’t had much time for posting. The weekend of Oct 9th, the turbine would turn its self off. At first every few hours and then every hour. My husband set up a camera on it so we could easily watch it. We hoped we would see some kind of pattern or symptom just before it stopped, plus with the camera,we would know when it needed a reboot. It would always come back with when you power it off and back on.   Rodney, our installer was convinced it was the power supply, but it was Canadian Thanksgiving on monday, so it would be hard to get an new power supply.   Then on Sunday night it just died and wouldn't come back. It was off for about 5 days, then one windy day we tried it again and it worked. It would work for about a day or two at a time for about week. I think we made all of that 49KWH that week. 

Parker from Redriven came out last weekend and gave us the upgrade to the “long board”  they have been working on.  He worked all weekend to get us going on the new system. 

It included replacements of almost everything in the controller box, and upgrade to the controller program, a new Anemometer and a new power supply.  ( I'll write more about this when I have more time)


The new system ran for about 2 days (with barely any wind) the good news is that the new power supply in the nacelle uses much less power. So when there was no wind those two days we hardly lost any  power. Parker also made us a switch and taught us how to take the turbine up and down.  the first time it went up I was was to busy taking pictures ( that didn't come out ) to pay attention to how to bring it up. 

Parker say he will be back tomorrow with a fix. Unfortunately, today was one of the windiest days we’ve had since we got the turbine.

Three issues with the wind turbine but fast response to our call

Yesterday, my husband noticed that it was windy but the wind turbine was not moving. He called Rodney and he came out today. They found three things that were wrong:


1) The Yaw break was burned up. Apparently it had been permanently on for the last two months, but this break will not be used until we get the new controller card.

2) There were some loose connections on the Yaw relays.

3) The a power supply needed to be moved in order to get more ventilation in the head.


It was impressive that Rodney came the next day after we called him. We are about 3 hours away from him. Hopefully, fixing these things will also help to reduce the power needed to run the turbine.

New settings and info on power use

We had a surprise visit from Parker from Redriven Tuesday. He made some adjustments and explained some of the settings so we'll use less power in low winds. He also hooked up the inverters so they will show in WindView.  (more on that later)   Below is a picture of how the wind settings are now.  Also, the units of measurement, definitions of what they mean, plus why that are set that way.


Parker told us that when we get the new controller, the break which now takes a lot of energy to remain open (off)  will use less power to stay open.  Now with the old controller, we are using full power to keep the break off.  This means we'll see some energy improvements when we get he new controller. Maybe we'll be able to run the turbine next August without paying the grid for power.

Here are the definitions of the Wind settings.

Thank you Parker for helping all of us understand what the settings mean

Start wind = 6 mph that means when the anemometer shows 6 mph the start timer will start counting

Start time =60 seconds this mean the anemometer must show 6 mph for a count of  60 seconds to before it starts to hunt for the direction of the wind. The yaw motor will kick in and move the head to the right position. Moving it prior to that value is not worth the power it takes to move the head head with the yaw motor.

Stop wind = 5 mph this means that if the wind = 5 mph the stop wind counter will come on. We had this at 1 which meant it was always hunting.

Stop time =300 seconds. This means if the wind is below 5 mph for 300 second or 5 minutes it will stop hunting for the wind direction.

Max wind = 30.0 mph ( Changed from 25 mph)  When the wind value from the Anemometer exceeds this speed, the system will automatically go into “OVERWIND” which shuts down the system.  It  shuts down by turning  90 degrees out of the wind and stops the blades via a contactor on the AC 3-Phase side in the controller.


Max time =When the Anemometer reads a wind speed LESS THAN “Max Wind” for the “Max Time” value (10 minutes) the system will restart.  This allows the system to stay out of the wind in an OVERWIND condition as long as it sees 30mph+.  The timer starts once the wind comes down below the “Max Wind” setting because if the system gusts back up above 30, it will continue to maintain out of the wind and shutoff.  The logic is, if the wind stays down below the “Max Wind” setting long enough (10 minutes as predicated by the Max Time value) then the system is good to restart without the threat of an OVERWIND situation.  OVERWIND is the only Automatically restarting fault condition.  Max time means that when the Anemometer reads a wind speed LESS THAN “Max Wind” for the “Max Time” value (10 minutes) the system will restart.  This allows the system to stay out of the wind in an OVERWIND condition as long as it sees 30mph+.  The timer starts once the wind comes down below the “Max Wind” setting because if the system gusts back up above 30, it will continue to maintain out of the wind and shutoff.  The logic is, if the wind stays down below the “Max Wind” setting long enough (10 minutes as predicated by the Max Time value) then the system is good to restart without the threat of an OVERWIND situation.  OVERWIND is the only Automatically restarting fault condition.

 All inverters low = 200  - This setting is not used
All inverters high = 250 - This setting is not used
All inverter high timer= 5 seconds    This setting is not used
The inverter controls are set in the Inverter


Min Voltage = 250 V When the controller sees a value greater than 250 volt being produced from the Turbine, it says “I’m over producing and the turbine needs to turn slightly out of the wind”. This setting correlates with “Turn Out Degrees and Turn Out Time” settings from Yaw Control Settings page. (see picture  below)

Max Voltage = 295 V
Once the AC Peak exceeds 295 Volts (Max Voltage setting) for 2 seconds (Turn Out Time setting), it will rotate 15 degrees  (Turn out degrees) out of the wind. This will be seen on the controller main screen because the “Desired Orientation” direction indicator on the top right side (green arrow clock type thing) of the controller will say 165 or 195 degrees, indicating that the turbine no longer wants to be 180 degrees relative into the wind, but rather at a 15 degree off-set. The turbine will continue to turn out at  15 degree intervals as long as it continues to see AC volts >295. The system will wait 20 seconds (see pic below -Turn hold)  between each attempt to turn farther out. That way it has a chance to see if the change in orientation has allowed the turbine to make 295 volts or less.  see Min Voltage for more detail

 Regulation window = 20 Volts is a setting that dictates to the controller when the turbine should be sending voltage to the dummy load and how much. When the turbine starts to over produce power (anything over Max Voltage) not only will it turn out, but it will send some voltage to the Resistive Load to aid in slowing the turbine down. Reg Window basically means that in a window of 20 volts from Max Voltage (in this case 295-315), the turbine will send 0-100% of the power being made to that Resistive load. So for instance, if it was 5 volts over 295 volts, 5 is 25% of 20, so it would send 25% of the power being made to the resistive load.

 Over voltage = 350V Over voltage will shut down the system into an “OVERVOLT” fault, 90 degrees turn out and shut down the blades.  The logic here is that “at 350v production, we have not been able to turn out far enough, and we are sending 100% of the power being produced back to the resistive loads to act as brakes, and we’re still over producing, we need to shutdown”.  The system will shutdown and display an OVERVOLT fault and will not restart until someone manually restarts it using the E-Stop button.

Min Voltage = 250 Volts   When the turbine turns out due to being over Max Voltage, for instance lets say its at 165 degrees, a 15 degree off set, when the turbine comes down below 250 V for the “Turn In Time” value from the Yaw Control setting page (see below), it will turn back towards the wind 5 degrees, which is the “Turn In Degree” value. The logic here is that “We’ve turned out due to over production, but now we are under producing because we are below 250 V so it must be safe to come back into the wind.” It will continue to turn back into the wind as long as the Voltage remains below 250V until to comes back to 180 degree orientation.

Max frequency = 30 Max Frequency measures revolutions, but it’s based on the AC Sine Waves coming from the turbine rather than blade rotations as you might assume. Basically, this does the same thing as Max Voltage. If the turbine sees rotation over a frequency of 30, it will begin to throw power again to the Resistive Load. There is no reg window for this setting, so it goes from 0-100% based on the gap between Max Freq and Over Freq. This acts as a secondary safety behind the braking it does based on voltage production.

Over frequency= 38 If the turbine ever hits a frequency of 38, it will go into an “OVERSPEED” fault and shutdown, 90 degrees out of the wind, blades stopped.  This is also need a manual restart.

Phase balance= 50V  This measures the difference in voltage between the phases.  I believe that when there is a difference of 50 V between any two phases, the system shuts down and indicates that one of the Phases may be bad.


UPS restart = 120 second. Restart is used when there is a battery backup system (I don't have one) . If there is a grid failure, normally everything will shut off. Controller, Inverters, everything. The system won’t make power, but it won’t be able to turn out of the wind and change that orientation as the wind direction changes. With a Battery Backup system, the controller would still receive power, and be able to continue to turn the turbine to maintain a 90 degree off set orientation. The UPS Restart would say that it needs to see grid power for 2 minutes, it knows power is back and will restart the turbine.

The Yaw Control Settings Menu

The one month results are in

No drum roll please . . . Since National Grid was here July 27 – call that day 0, we are @ negative 67 kwh. Yes, when there is no wind, you use more power than you make. This month we’ve had a few windy days where we made some power, but we’ve had many more where there was no wind at all.



Where did I get the -67 KWH  reading from? NYSERDA requires the installer to include a meter that measures power going to the grid. This meter goes both ways too. On a windy day it increases and on a no wind day is shows that we are using power from the grid to run the turbine. Unfortunalty, this month we've had a lot of no wind days.

This is a graph from a very close by weather station that shows the winds for August.


I emailed Re-driven to see if they are working on some adjustments in the newest controller software to cut down on the power usage during no wind days. Here is an example of what we were experiencing; We were eating dinner outside on our deck the other night. It was a summer evening without a drop of wind. While we ate, over about a 20 minutes period, the yaw motor turned the turbine twice. I’m assuming it takes a lot of power to move that heavy turbine head and there was no apparent reason to move it. Redriven asked that I move my wind start setting from 2 to 4. (see below pre -change) I just did this yesterday. Hopefully, that will cut down on running the yaw motor when there is no hope of making power.

I finally read the Aurora inverter owner’s manual. One thing I learned was how to set the currency to USD (US Dollars) from EUR (Euros). I like to think of myself as a citizen of the world, but I pay for most things at my house in USD. I’ve also learned how see th amount of power we’ve made in the last 30 days. This excludes the power used to run the wind turbine and associated equipment.


Inverter output


Inverter #1 97.6 kwh

Inverter #2 87.6 kwh

185.2 kwh


It makes sense that Inverter #1 has is reading more power. They are programed to have # 1 come on line first, only after it hits a threshold does # 2 go on line.  This is to save power I believe.


Originally, I was using 9 cents per KWH when I calculated the pay back. Now that I further exam my bill for the exact cost it takes some calculation. The price of power is 6.4 cents per KWH. I get some renewable energy from Green Mountain for 1.6 cents extra charge and the delivery charge from National grid of 5.3 cents per KWH. Also some taxes and the SBC/RPS. This would put my real delivered cost at 15 cents per KWH. I’ll have to use this new figure when I figure out my payback again – after we get some wind.


Delivery 5.3
Delivery Adj. 0.983
Incr Stat Ass 0.307
SBC/RPS 0.594
Tax 0.14368

Electric supply 6.44
Renewable service 1.6
-----------------------------
Total cents per KWH 15.36768


That .59 cents SBC/RPS is the charge that helped NYSERDA pay for their portion of my wind turbine cost. Thank you to all of you that have paid for my wind turbine with your RSP charge for electricity use! I have no idea what Incr State Ass - is about.

So at the end of one month, I’m now $10.29 behind. We could turn off the turbine for “no wind” days, but then we might miss some wind when we are away from the house or in the middle of the night. Maybe by changing the wind start setting from 2-4 will help too.


I still have great hopes for September, when the winds should pick up and we’ll have fewer no wind days eating up my power. You can see from the Inverter stats I'm making power on windy days.


Stay tuned.