Archive for the ‘Wind Turbine’ Category
June 20, 2010 – Mammatus!
We had a spectacular show Friday night as the second round of storms for the day passed by to the east. A nice field of mammatus clouds developed. I went out anticipating that the thunderheads to the east might have some interesting illumination from the setting sun to the west, but was very pleased to ...Read more.
January 29, 2010 – How Much Noise Does a Skystream Make
I went out on a windy day to see if I could capture the sound the Skystream makes with my video camera. This is a short video of a Skystream 2.4 kw wind turbine on a 70 foot tower on a windy day. I mainly posted it to show how it sounds. You can compare ...Read more.
January 6, 2010 – 2009 Skystream Results
Now that the year is over, it’s time to look at the Skystream wind turbine production results. Month kWh Produced by Turbine kWh Used by house/farm Jan 334 1275 Feb 356 1109 March 482 899 April 556 961 May 455 782 June 209 693 July 157 867 Aug 169 923 Sept 116 801 Oct 371 ...Read more.
October 18, 2009 – PFI Field Day
Yesterday was the PFI field day at the farm – I returned home literally an hour before the event. Linda had arranged the food and prepared a meal mainly from the farm – squash and apple soup, minestrone soup, and apple crisp. The field day went well, there were probably about 25 attendees, from as ...Read more.
March 20, 2009 – Skyview Software
Here’s a screenshot of the the Skyview software that remotely monitors and logs the wind turbine. This shows in the graphs, the watts produced along with the RPMs. The machine is humming along pretty good here, making 2432 watts at the time this screenshot was captured. Although this graph shows a top watt scale of ...Read more.
March 18, 2009 – Skystream Upgrade
Today we got our complimentary upgrade to our skystream turbine. Among other things, this will change the approximate high shut-off speed from around 30 mph to around 50 mph. I think this may increase our production 25-50%. This month alone for example, we’ve had 3 days it was off. Our record production for a day ...Read more.
January 10, 2009 – Wind Turbine Presentation
Today was the 2nd day of the Practical Farmers of Iowa conference. Up today was my presentation entitled “Small Wind on the Farm.” I’ve converted the Powerpoint to a series of images. Keep in mind that the slides where only meant for talking points for the presentation, but the pictures may be interesting and I ...Read more.
June 22, 2008 – Skystream Data Logger
Today was a quiet day after the party – tearing down is so much easier than setting up. It was nice to walk around the farm in all its well-keptness and not be prone to weed or fix “one more thing.” I spent some time with the Skystream data logger. The data logger uses RF ...Read more.
June 21, 2008 – Dedication of “Boreas” Wind Turbine
Today was the big day – one we thought might not happen. We were very close to postponing the party a week ago in the wake of the flooding and water in the basement that demanded all our time – but we went ahead with the triple bash of wind turbine dedication, 2nd Annual Logan ...Read more.
May 25, 2008 – Skystream Summary
Doesn’t she look good up in the air? I’ll try to use this post to summarize some of the most-commonly asked questions about the Skystream. It is on a 70 foot tower (although they are commonly mounted on 35 foot towers in more crowded locations). The machine is connected to the utility grid so excess ...Read more.
May 21, 2008 – Final Connections for Skystream
Nothing nearly as exciting as yesterday’s tower raising tody. Making the trench to run the underground wire from the tower to the utility pole. The trench from the utility pole and along the shed. The other half of the trench. I’m including these more for my own records so years from now I won’t have ...Read more.
May 20, 2008 – Up, Up and Away!
Today was day two of the wind turbine installation. Here’s Linda a GJ checking out the turbine blades just out of the package. Everyone want to get in on touching the blades that will be spinning high in the sky in a few minutes. This is the main unit of the wind turbine. This is ...Read more.
May 19, 2008 – Wind Turbine Assembly Day 1
Today, the wind turbine tower assembly began! Here’s the automatic pipe cutter doing its job on cutting a pipe to length. Last week five 21 foot long pipes were dropped off at the end of the driveway and I moved them closer to the turbine with the tractor. The pipes are heavy – about 375 ...Read more.
April 30, 2008 – Wind Turbine Foundation Poured!
After the 3rd scheduled attempt, today was finally dry enough to get a cement truck with 5 yards of cement back to the wind turbine site without sinking out of sight. Todd and James set the layout for the tower and four guy wire supports. A perfectly flat site is ideal, but hard to find, ...Read more.
