9/11/07 - Archive News
"Watching the news last night on the TV, it seemed that Orkney had the worst of the weather yesterday - Even speaking to someone in Shetland today, they reckoned there was less wind up there yesterday than there was here in Orkney.
With 4 Scirocco wind turbines running in Orkney at the moment, and I thought you might be interested to hear how they all fared!
The highest wind speed we recorded was 43.8 m/s, and for a significant part of the day (0700 to 1500 or so) the wind sat steady at between 30 and 35 m/s, fluctuating up to 40ish. There were a lot of brownouts and blackouts on the grid, some lasting overnight and the power only
being re-instated this morning.
3 of the owners phoned me up at various points in the day yesterday, as the wind was battering us about. All were just phoning in to report their turbines were doing away fine, and what their latest meter readings were! One of the owners was without grid overnight and was wondering what he should do with his turbine. We simply advised him to leave it be, and when the grid returned, it would all come back on line again. This he did, and I spoke to him again to day and all is well! We reckon it ran free in nothing less than 20 m/s all night, and nearer 30 m/s most of the time!
One off grid client had kWh's coming out of her ears yesterday - Remember that unlike many turbines, the Scirocco makes full power even in 30 m/s and doesnt tail off in high winds.
Unfortuantely, we did have some other problem wind turbines yesterday, but not Eoltecs. We have one with a burned out generator core, and about 4 others that suffered DC overvoltage "lockouts" which lost a whole 24 hours production until the wind dropped sufficiently for the inverters to reset.
I also had a phone call from someone who DIY installed a 1 kW turbine earlier in the year - It didnt survive, and broke up, apparantly quite spectacularly in the wind! His house and office overlooks an Eoltec wind turbine so he was asking today if we could fit a Eoltec Scirocco instead, as it galled him looking at it running away all day through the storm as his lay in bits!
This morning it was pretty cold, with some bits of snow lying around. With the air being this cold (and dense!) this is about as onerous as it gets for turbine survivability! We notice the big turbines do a lot more power in the colder weather due to the denser air, so wind
whisling past a turbine at 3 degrees and 44 m/s is a pretty good test for it! " Bryan
"Watching the news last night on the TV, it seemed that Orkney had the worst of the weather yesterday - Even speaking to someone in Shetland today, they reckoned there was less wind up there yesterday than there was here in Orkney.
With 4 Scirocco wind turbines running in Orkney at the moment, and I thought you might be interested to hear how they all fared!
The highest wind speed we recorded was 43.8 m/s, and for a significant part of the day (0700 to 1500 or so) the wind sat steady at between 30 and 35 m/s, fluctuating up to 40ish. There were a lot of brownouts and blackouts on the grid, some lasting overnight and the power only
being re-instated this morning.
3 of the owners phoned me up at various points in the day yesterday, as the wind was battering us about. All were just phoning in to report their turbines were doing away fine, and what their latest meter readings were! One of the owners was without grid overnight and was wondering what he should do with his turbine. We simply advised him to leave it be, and when the grid returned, it would all come back on line again. This he did, and I spoke to him again to day and all is well! We reckon it ran free in nothing less than 20 m/s all night, and nearer 30 m/s most of the time!
One off grid client had kWh's coming out of her ears yesterday - Remember that unlike many turbines, the Scirocco makes full power even in 30 m/s and doesnt tail off in high winds.
Unfortuantely, we did have some other problem wind turbines yesterday, but not Eoltecs. We have one with a burned out generator core, and about 4 others that suffered DC overvoltage "lockouts" which lost a whole 24 hours production until the wind dropped sufficiently for the inverters to reset.
I also had a phone call from someone who DIY installed a 1 kW turbine earlier in the year - It didnt survive, and broke up, apparantly quite spectacularly in the wind! His house and office overlooks an Eoltec wind turbine so he was asking today if we could fit a Eoltec Scirocco instead, as it galled him looking at it running away all day through the storm as his lay in bits!
This morning it was pretty cold, with some bits of snow lying around. With the air being this cold (and dense!) this is about as onerous as it gets for turbine survivability! We notice the big turbines do a lot more power in the colder weather due to the denser air, so wind
whisling past a turbine at 3 degrees and 44 m/s is a pretty good test for it! " Bryan
