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!

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.

Our Nuts Were Tightened!

Yeah!  Redriven came this week and tightened down all of our bolts. The tech said that just about everything was loose.  I guess vibration will do that.  He said the hub nut tightened down about ½ inch. There was another term the tech used to describe what he did to keep it from coming loose that they do now – tapped it or tinned it?  Does anyone know what they do?  I know someone that commented a while back talked about welding it or something like that so it couldn’t come loose again.

This year is such a freak year.  There is so little wind, that I had to wait two days to see the turbine even move after repair. Last night we got some good wind and I could hear a marked improvement in the sound the turbine was making. We didn't get the highest winds, but it sounded healthy for a change.   Let the winds come!

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

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.

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.

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 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.

Going with the 80 foot tower!

I’ve decided to go with the 80 foot tower .

-The payback period is shorter

- I wouldn’t have to wait for NYSERDA to re-approve me

- I'm getting a tower that has been out and working for over a year

- I’ve spent a lot of money all ready – it is time to make some green power!

My installer says he is ordering the anchors, rebar and pad. We should be ready to dig in 3 weeks. Now I’ve got to clean my garage so I have room on the wall for the inverter equipment. I think my installer said he needed a 6ft by 6ft space. I’ll have to ask again for the spec for that that wall.

Weibull curve

My price for the tower was not right - sorry back to the drawing board on trying to figure out the pay back to determine if this is the right thing to do. My installer thinks that the NYSERDA re-aproval for a 100 vs. 80 foot tower will be quick.

Ellen

Still waiting to get the price of the Redriven 100 or 120ft tower

I'm still waiting for the price for the 100 and 120 foot towers. On June 4th, Rodney said he would have the price in a week or so Does anyone know of anyone that has gotten a price for the 100 or 120 foot tower for the 10K? At some point, I'm going to have to just go with 80' . I can't wait for ever to see if I might be able to afford a higher tower.

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.

Waiting for NYSERDA

I’m in the final stages of getting verbal NYSERDA approval! No, I’m not sure what that means, but this has been taking a long time. NYSERDA is The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority that gives funds for alternative energy. This project would not be possible with out their approval.

NYSERDA required an environmental study. That slowed my application down a little. Apparently, most towns require an impact study. My town didn't require a study, so I had to get them to fill out the forms. If not, I'd have to do the NYSERDA study that is pages and pages.

I also had to sign off on the promised power that my system will produce. NYSERDA’s estimates on the wind I'll have seem low, but I guess they want you to be realistic about the power you could produce.

There is some good in this wait. While I’ve been waiting, Redriven has started to offer 100 and 120 ft towers. I’m waiting to see the pricing of those options, but that means getting a new permit too. Once I get the pricing of the towers I'll do the comparison.

I guess I better get used to this waiting. My installer said that once we get the approval, it will take one month for the cement to cure for the base.

Reports of issues with the Redriven 20KW Turbines blades

It seems there are a few reports of Redriven 20KW wind turbines breaking off blades during high winds and a few others that almost had the same fate. (See the comment left on my April 4 entry).

Here is what I’ve found:

Back in February, there was a report of a high school with three Redriven turbines that had blades hit the pole and flew off. See this link for more details

http://www.wind-watch.org/news/2009/02/10/blade-breaks-off-wind-turbine/

Here is an account of several more having the same issue.

http://www.windaction.org/news/20716

I contacted Scott Jackson who wrote the report. He said that the 10KW are not having the same issues with the blades breaking up but have had controller issues.

He gave me the name of someone with the 10KW in his back yard. He said this person could tell me about the controller issue first hand. I called him and he said that he did have controller issues, but Redriven took care of the problem by providing a retro fit. They added a resistive load. He has not had the problems since the retrofit. He's not worried about the blade issue and is now thinking of getting a 20KW with a tilt up tower. ( I didn't know 20KW could tilt up). He would then move his 10KW to another site. He said that he can see many wind turbines from his property. During a recent storm, many of turbines in the view from his home lost blades. He hasn’t lost a blade yet.


I also found this article about how Redriven is fixing the issues at Perkins High School.

http://www.morningjournal.com/articles/2009/04/18/news/mj913904.txt

This article says that Redriven is replacing the blades at Perkins High School with an older technology blade and is monitoring now for vibrations.

I would love to hear more from people with first hand experiences with Redriven. Please contact me or post your comments.

*******Update *** 5-30-09 here is another artical on this topic ******

http://www.agrinewsinteractive.com/fullstory.htm?ArticleID=10072&ShowSection=News


******Update ****10-03-09 I found more info on the Perkins School . Here is a news letter tell more details about testing and new blades.
http://www.perkins.k12.oh.us/pages/uploaded_files/Perkins%20United%20Fall%202009%20for%20web.pdf

also a news paper article
http://www.sanduskyregister.com/articles/2009/08/31/front/1582172.txt


UPDATE - May 2010 ****see what Redriven says about new designs

Is the Redriven's Wind Generator the right choice for a home owner?

UPDATE : 12/21/10 -  Redriven no longer gets their turbines from the SWG - Yangzhou Shenzhou  Company.  More than a year ago they started making their own parts in China. Redriven has their own factory in China run by Cameron Grant.  None of the parts of my turbine are manufactured by  SWG - Yangzhou Shenzhou  Company.

Paul Gipe is THE authority on Wind power. In his book, Wind Power, he says “ Rotor diameter says it all”. What you are looking for is energy not power. Your ability to capture the wind’s energy is what is important. Of course hub height is also important. The trade off with hub height is the ability to service the turbine. We settled for 80ft in order to get the ability for a hydraulic tilt up tower.

Gipe also says that the power curves given by manufactures are just “informed guess work” and should be viewed with “ a good dose of skepticism.”

The power curve is made up of:

Star-up Speed (starts turning)
Cut-in Speed (start producing power)
Rated speed (speed that it reaches is rated power)
Peak power (Max power it can produce)
Cut-out speed (Speed that the generator stop producing power and go into protection mode)
Furling Speed (For turbines with tail vanes)
Wind Speed Bin (A way to produce discrete data from continuous data)

The Redriven Turbine’s published data in this area is superior to other 10KW turbines. Longer blade diameter, low start up wind speed the ability extend the peak power with the active yaw points to a better performing wind turbine.

However! Another big consideration is reliability. Everyone expects to get many years out of a wind turbine. This is my biggest concern in picking the Redriven product. It is very new and doesn’t have a proven track record of performance. If the product has many issues, will Redriven and my installer be able to be able to keep the installed based operational and be profitable during the five year warrantee period. Will we be able to get parts to keep the turbine working long enough to get our investment back?

I started my investigation trying to find out about the Chinese company that make Redriven’s turbine. I did a search with the terms Redriven and China and came up with shipping documents http://www.importgenius.com/importers/redriven.html
Yangzhou Shenzhou shipping to Redriven in Canada.

As soon as you go to the SWG - Yangzhou Shenzhou web site it is clear that is the Redriven product. Same look, same tower, same hydraulic lifting mechanism.
http://www.f-n.cn/


I did some investigation on the Internet and found that Redriven’s supplier is SWG - Yangzhou Shenzhou. They have been in business for 12 years. ISO 9000 certified.

One of the best sites for seeing the product that the Chinese manufacturer sells that I have found is http://www.evolvegreen.ca/catalog/item/6319999/6614526.htm
They have many manufacture PDFs

http://shenzhougenerator.en.alibaba.com/
also shows the wind turbines.

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.