Another Nacelle Fault

We were up and running for almost 24 hours before we got first an “over wind” and then an “over speed” and then the dreaded “nacelle fault” error.


We took the tower down and determined that the programming on the card in the nacelle was lost again.

Today is the monthly measuring day Feb 27 – March 27 we were up for a total of 1 day for the month and made 13kwh for the month, but lost 1 KWH  lowering and raising the tower. Net gain for the month was 12KWHs. Average wind speed that one day was 10 mph with wind gusts at 28mph.

We are up and running again after being down for 42 days!

Now I know why most people are just happy to see it spin. I really missed looking out there and watching it go. I can enjoy windy days again instead thinking of them as missed opportunities to make power.


When Parker was here last he diagnosed it was the computer cards that had issues so we sent both the controller card in the nacelle and in the “long board” back to Redriven to be checked out / refurbished.

Unfortunately, Parker is no longer working for Redriven, but my most excellent husband spent the whole day yesterday putting the cards back in and troubleshooting wiring connectivity issues. Being a wind tech or wind smith is a really hard job, in the summer. In the winter, it is just no fun at all. Lucky for us, my husband does this type of continuity checking for his work and has all the tools and he had time to do it. I had to work and wasn’t much help at all. Now we are back up and running again! There are only a few days left in March, the best month of the year for wind. It seems the winter just won’t give up this year so maybe the wind will continue to blow too.

What was the best production day so far?

Anonymous person asked a really good good question, so I thought I'd post the answer rather than just commenting back.    They asked since day 1 what was the best day of production?  They also as for the best hour,  but I don't have that hourly data. Luckily, my husband took a daily readings in December. I was grabbing momentary reading back in Summer/ Fall to try and make a power curve. When the temp got really cold in the garage, I was not that dedicated to the task any more.

Dec 28, 2010 we made 30KWHs. My local weather station about 1/2 a mile away and few feet higher said that the average wind speed that day was 12.5 mph and gusts were up to 32 mph. This would be a good day because the wind gusts didn’t get too high very often. If it is really gusty the wind turbine goes into protection mode and you shut down waiting for the wind to calm down.

Mark Mayhew from NYSERDA told me that March is the best month for wind in our area. We haven't been up any days yet in March, but I have heard some great wind the last few nights. Redriven let's get this thing fixed!

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.

Still down but with a new problem

Parker came back on 2/10/11 Thursday morning and it definitely wasn’t the same old problem of losing code.  This time something went wrong in the dog vane reading that caused the wind turbine to spin around and around in the same direction.  There are normally fail safes that keep this from happening, but not this time.   The cables wrapped around and twisted the cables around the hydraulic cables and the tower wouldn’t come down.  The power cables came off the terminal and must have sent some power back to the control panel computer at the house. The computer is not talking anymore and appears to be dead.   I guess another lesson learned is to look through the door at the cables before trying to lower the tower.    It was bitterly cold when we put the tower back up Thursday night. This tower raising gets really old when your fingers get stiff from the cold putting all of the bolts back in.  Parker said someone would be back next week to replace the computer. Let's hope it can be fixed without taking the tower down again.

Down again :(

We were only running for 1 day and we were back down again.  The good news is they have a plan on how to fix this, the bad news is yesterday would have been huge wind power day and we missed it. Let's hope we don't miss many more days like that.

Up and running again

Sorry I haven’t been updating the blog, but there hasn’t been much to say. I was out of town for training and now I’m studying for a technical certification in my “spare” time. Parker was here from Redriven last week and tried to upload the code back into the Nacell card, but with no luck. Just has he suspect, The card would not load in the field. What we have been waiting for all this time is a new card that can be swapped out for the one we have. They don’t know yet why these cards loose their code.


Parker finally came today but late, so my husband and I lowered the tower before he got here. We’ve never done this with a large amount of snow before. My daughter cut a path with snow shoes, so it wasn’t as hard to walk in the snow to the turbine. Next time we know bring a bucket for the bolts so they don’t get lost in the snow. You also need to clear out the path for the piston. Neopreen gloves are handy too. The tower is so cold your bear hands stick to it and normal gloves make it hard to handle the washers.

 The snow and ice packed in the space between the base sides. The ice blocked the piston so it couldn’t line up with the hole for the bolt to go through the base. It sure is a lot easier in the summer.

While we had the turbine down some snow piled on blades and the tower. We used a heat gun to melt some of the ice off of the blades so it wouldn’t be unbalanced when the wind got going. I also worried that when the tower went up that the ice might come down from the tower on us but it held for the time we were out there putting the bolts back in.


Now we wait for wind . . .