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.

November Results

This month we’ve had a few issues with the software. It has been having errors in low wind and doing a lot of extra yawing. We’ve had to unwind it twice. Not huge issues but we missed a few hours of wind here and there when we were sleeping or away. There is a new version of software that should fix these low wind issues, but we were not able to get it to load. We’re hoping a tech will come by soon to upgrade us. With the next version of software, upgrading will be able to be done remotely they say.




This month we had a total of 286KWH of power. The average wind speed for the month was only 5 miles per hour.

Other news this month – I’m glad to see that NYSERDA still has Redriven listed as a choice. The more turbines they have in NY State the more access we will have to the technicians.

http://www.nyserda.ny.gov/Page-Sections/Renewables/Small-Wind/Eligible-Wind-Turbines.aspx

October a Record Breaking Month

Another record broken.  From Sept 27 to Oct. 27 We produced 408 KWH for the month. Average wind speed was 6.3 mph. The inverters recorded that they produced 529KWH for the month.  Also, we have been running without an outage since July!

Last Sunday Scott from Redriven was here and upgraded our system (Nacell, long board and HMI to version 3.34. 

This was not a big upgrade. You can now get live wind speed on the main screen . The new software has Internet connection capability again. The main screen now has RPM, MPS and Degrees. It also had better error handling so there will be few times when it completely shuts down based on faults alarms.  We've had it for 6 days and so far it seems better than the last code. 

Another New Best Day Ever Oct 15th.

The wind has picked up and so has the power we are making.  84KHW in a 24hour period.

Here is what the wind looks like for the period 6am to Midnight with an average wind speed of 15mph.

Absence of Wind Made for a Lackluster Month

The wind was abysmal this month. With the exception of a few good days, there wasn’t much wind at all. The average wind speed for the month was a mere 3.3 mph. The wind turbine just breaks even in that range. This month, all the blame should be placed on Mother Nature. The wind turbine was ready to go but with no wind , it couldn’t produce. September 13 was the exception for the month the new best day ever but it couldn't make up for a lackluster beginning and end to the month.


 This month we made a total of 69KWH.

Wind Sept 2011

New Best Day Ever! Sept 13th

We learned during hurricane Irene that constant change of wind direction and gust are the enemy of wind power making. Although there was a lot of wind, the hurricane was pretty useless for making power. The big gusts would shut the turbine down into protection mode and when the gust stopped the constantly changing direction made for inefficient capturing of the wind.



However, September 13, 2011 “The NEW Best Day Ever” had a near constant moderate wind speed of 9 miles per hour and a constant direction from the south west.

We measured from 6am Sept 13 to 6am Sept 14 we made 60KWH with an average that day of 8.9miles per hour. Looking at the graph, it looks like the power was really made from 10am on averaging a steady ~12mhp.

Wind graph for Sept 13 2011

Wind direction for Sept 13

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.