Friday, July 23, 2010

Wind Turbine in Highland County, VA

I was over in Highland County today and was again reminded about how truly beautiful that area is. The following video shows a 2.5kW turbine that is located on the flank of Snowy Mountain. You can read more about this turbine by clicking here.

The video shows the turbine coming to life and then reaching a fairly good speed. It is a nice progression and the video shows the same machine from a couple of angles. The machine weight is a bit more than 300 lbs. It is an ARE110 with a blade length of about 6'. The nameplate rating of 2.5kW denotes the amount of power that the machine can output at peak wind speed (~26mph). If the wind speed is less, then the resulting power will also be less.



This turbine was originally installed in the Spring of 2009 by PIMBY Energy. It is on a 100' tower and uses an 8' stub tower to provide additional clearance for the turbine blades

Thursday, July 1, 2010

A Winter To Remember on Snowy Mountain

Go straight to the article, A Winter to Remember on Snowy Mountain by Keith Carson & Polly Newlon

Shortly before New Years I got a call from Keith saying that he'd gone out that morning only to find his wind turbine on the ground - 100' lower than it should have been. That's a problem.

Keith and Polly are customers of mine who live off the grid in Highland County, VA. Here's a photo of Keith (left) and his neighbor Dave as they work on disassembling the wrecked machine. We spent the first day of 2010 cleaning up this mess.



Keith and Polly have authored a great article about their winter and how losing the turbine affected their off-grid lifestyle. It is a nice read and it was originally printed in the Highland Recorder early in June.

The tower manufacturer had under-engineered the stub pipe (seen in the photo above) and this resulted in the failure. It also put Keith and Polly in a tight spot because they depend on the wind turbine for a greater portion of their electricity in the winter months. Needless to say, I was relieved to get a new turbine back up on the tower and so were they.

Below is a photo of Chris bolting up the new machine in preparation for the crane. Note that things are much less snowy on Snowy Mountain. You can see Keith and Polly's home in the background as well as the lowest section of their 100' turbine tower.



Keith took the following photos of the actual pick..........................................