Archive for the ‘Wind Turbine’ Category

March 26, 2012 – Skystream Record Day!

I can feel it coming in the air tonight – a new daily Skystream production record in the air today!

Today the Skystream produced 51.4 kwh of electricity. It beats the previous best day by about 10%. We are a lock to beat our monthly record of 622 kwh. If, and it’s a big if, the average daily production of this month holds the next five days, we’ll be looking at around 680 kwh.

Yesterday wasn’t the windiest day we’ve had, but must have hit a high, steady, sweet spot that didn’t trip the wind overspeed shut-off too many times.

January 9, 2012 – 2011 Skystream Wind Turbine Results

Ok, the numbers are in from last year’s Skystream production. In summary, the Skystream produced an average of 387 kWh per month. This compares quite favorably to the average of the previous two years (333 kWh), and our household electric use dropped from an monthly average of 857 kWh in 2010 to 819 kWh in 2011. So, the Skystream produced 47% of our electric use in 2011.

Production stats for the Skystream Turbine for 2011.

2009 Summary
In 2009, the Skystream produced 4012 kWh, an average of 334 kWh per month. The farm and household used 11,068 kWh, an average of 922 kWh per month. The Skystream produced 36% of our energy.

2010 Summary
In 2010, the Skystream produced 3993 kWh, an average of 332 kWh per month. The farm and household used 10,284 kWh, an average of 857 kWh per month. The Skystream produced 39% of our energy.

2011 Summary
In 2011, the Skystream produced 4643 kWh, an average of 387 kWh per month. The farm and household used 10,145 kWh, an average of 819 kWh per month. The Skystream produced 47% of our energy.

January 6, 2012 – Trying to do Our Part

Although, like most people, I don’t like seeing myself on film, the Farm Energy Working group asked if they could interview me for part of a larger series on farm energy. For better or worse, here’s my 4 minute segment.

April 20, 2011 – Powerline Problems

The last few days the turbine has been shutting down during times it should not.  I checked the diagnostic software that transmits info from the turbine itself.  The software reported that the grid voltage was not ok.  Line 1 voltage was at 133 and line 1 at 120 (the voltage should be close to the same on both lines). I called the power company, and within 30 minutes there was a truck here to look at the problem.  They thought it sounded like a neutral problem and it looked like the neutral wire connection near the transformed was bad, so they reconnected it and it was fine for a while.

The next day it was reporting the same problem and the lights in the house were slightly dimming and brightening.  I called again, and this time they found a problem on the pole in our yard.  One of the hot wires had lost its plastic coating and had evidently run against something it wasn’t supposed to touch and it looked like it had arced and melted about 1/3 to 1/4 of the metal strands that supplies power.

The red circle shows the replaced section of wire.  This tells me that the Skystream is a good forecaster of future household electrical problems and it does a good job of protecting itself  in the case of a problem with the quality of electricity coming to the house and turbine.  Kudos to Consumers Energy for promptly responding and fixing the problem!

one year ago…”Emma on the Track”

January 24, 2011 – 2010 Southwest Windpower Skystream Results

Ok, the numbers are finally in from last year’s Skystream production.  In summary, the Skystream produced nearly identical production per month (334 kWh in ’09 vs 332 kWh in ’10), but our household electric use dropped from an monthly average of 922 kWh to 857 kWh, approximately 7%.

Production stats for the Skystream Turbine for 2009-2010.

2009 Summary
In 2009, the Skystream produced 4012 kWh, an average of 334 kWh per month. The farm and household used 11,068 kWh, an average of 922 kWh per month. The Skystream produced 36% of our energy.

2010 Summary
In 2010, the Skystream produced 3993 kWh, an average of 332 kWh per month.  The farm and household used 10,284 kWh, an average of 857 kWh per month.  The Skystream produced 39% of our energy.

one year ago…”Sleep, Who Needs Sleep”

December 19, 2010 – The Windspire that Never Was

Many of you may have recalled that I won a grant to become a “small wind demonstration site” to compare two different styles of turbines at the same location. The idea was simple – publish production data from two different turbines so potential purchasers might have some data other than the manufacturer’s claims.

So, I put down the money for the Mariah Power Windspire turbine last November (as in 13 months ago). The turbine was supposed to arrive in 2-3 weeks. It didn’t. It was scheduled to go up in the spring. Spring moved into summer and every scheduled date never panned out – due to manufacturing delays.

After the fall date came and went and still no turbine, I decided that it probably wasn’t going to happen and that I should try to get my deposit of half the cost back. Eventually, they refund came and it looks like the checks have cleared.

Now, we have to figure out how to give grant money back – evidently something the University’s accounting system isn’t set up to do!

one year ago…”Tank and Friends”

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 see these clouds and watch as the grew and developed.

The following bit of information is condensed from Wikipedia: Mammatus are most often associated with the anvil cloud that extends from a cumulonimbus (thunderheads). Mammatus are often indicative of a particularly strong storm or maybe even a tornadic storm. These tend to form more often during warm months and are most common over the midwest and eastern portions of the United States.

Mammatus may appear as smooth, ragged or lumpy lobes and may be opaque or semitransparent. Because mammatus occur as a grouping of lobes, the way they clump together can vary from an isolated cluster to a field of mamma that spread over hundreds of kilometers to being organized along a line, and may be composed of unequal or similarly-sized lobes. The individual mammatus lobe average diameters of 1–3 km and lengths on average of 0.5 km. A lobe can last an average of 10 minutes, but a whole cluster of mamma can range from 15 minutes to a few hours. They usually are composed of ice, but also can be a mixture of ice and liquid water.

As the sun sank lower, the clouds turned from yellow to red.

It was rather exhilarating to be outside walking under this strange meteorologic phenomenon under a wide open sky!

one year ago…”Emma’s First 5K”

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 it to a row of pine trees on the same property the same day. You might have to turn the sound up loud to hear it.

Since standard video cameras do not capture enough frames per second (you would need a special camera to capture the turbine spinning at 320 RPMs) the motion of the blades is not as you’d see with the blur of the naked eye.

For comparison, here’s the row of pine trees the same day.

one year ago…”Thingamajig Thursday #151″

January 6, 2010 – 2009 Skystream Results

Now that the year is over, it’s time to look at the Skystream wind turbine production results.

For the year, the Skystream produced 4012 kwH, an average of 334 kWh per month. The farm and household used 11,068 kWh, an average of 922 kWh per month. The Skystream produced 36% of our energy. Our historical average electrical use the ten previous years before the turbine and newer appliances was 1255 kWh/month – resulting in an average reduction of 333 kWh per month due to new appliances and awareness.

The interesting point is that our monthly consumption has dropped almost the exact same amount (333 kWh less per month) as the average 2009 turbine production (334 kWh/month). The point being that our efforts to upgrade to energy efficient appliances has resulted in nearly exactly the same amount of savings as turbine generation. So the take-home story is that even if you are not able to add an alternative energy system to your home, you can still reach the same energy savings by using energy-conserving appliances!

We hope our electric usage drops further next year, as we hope to put in a more efficient water heater. We also will produce more with the addition of another turbine still coming at a date TBD.

one year ago…Upcoming Practical Farmers of Iowa Meeting”

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 far as Emmetsburg and as close as State Center. I’ve updated the wind presentation with updated info. Since I was presenting and talking, photos are lean. For more commentary, see the PFI blog for Friday October 23.

one year ago…”Oops, Market Peppers”

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 2600, it does go higher.

one year ago…”Thingamajig Thursday #110″

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 is 32, so we would have made at least 96 more and there is so much more power in the high wind speeds, that I think it would have been closer to 150 more, which is about 50% of the average monthly production.

Here the hatch of the turbine is open in a Frankenstein-type mode, and wires connected to install new software to allow the upgrade – this is just a s software upgrade, nothing mechanical.  We also have a new remote communications module installed that shows us real-time stats from the turbine.

one year ago…”We Knew This Day Would Come”

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 have some new data on production and savings included.

Since the windiest six months of the year are upon us and we are due for a software upgrade to raise the top cut-out speed, I’m envisioning the savings will be even greater in the coming months.

one year ago…”Thingamajig Thursday #102″

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 to transmit data from the turbine to a laptop or PC. For the geek side in me, it was intriguing to watch the power generation graph while listening and watching the turbine so I could get a sense of how much electricity it produces at different sound/wind levels.

On this graph, the left axis of the graph represents watts produced.  The white line is power produced and the red line is RPMs of the blades.  This graph is in real-time and shows about three minutes of generating time left to right.  The peak in this period is about 1800 watts (or 18 100 watt light bulbs for perspective).  The day before it was windier and even though the turbine is rated as a 2kW machine (2000 watts) we saw it peak as high as 3600 watts – just as in fishing “you should have been here yesterday!”

one year ago…”Rain at Last”