E-3120 - a warning to all owners.

Dear All,

I've spend the past 48 hours wondering if I should post this or not... But here goes

A little over 5 years ago, our E-3120 turbine was commissioned.

We had been considering a wind turbine for several years prior to this, however the FIT mechanism made it an easy decision to push forward.

At the time, we were intending to finance the machine ourselves; however farmer owned projects as we were hoping for were not commonplace. It took a long time for us to a "partner" whom could provide us with all the information we needed to satisfy planning, power distribution and bank requirements. We were also very aware that this was a large investment and our chosen "partner" would be looking after the machine for us.

Since then, all service work and "emergency" repairs etc have been undertaken by the original installers.

However, despite repeated requests, the technicians never came to talk with us after service - always driving off without explanation of work done and issues identified & repaired etc. Furthermore, despite repeated requests service reports were not very forthcoming - eventually a bunch were emailed to us. We also felt the installer had a high turnover of technicians and so any "longer term variances" in the nacelle would not be identified. These concerns, along with a large number of historic issues (irrelevant to the point I will make) made us suspicious of the installer - were they acting in our best interests or not.

As farmers, we entrusted the smooth operation of the machine to our service partners - we expected them to be monitoring the machine and act proactively to avoid issues - this is what they were paid to do. Of course, they have claimed to be monitoring the machine remotely and had our backs.

As the original service contract was due to expire, we began to consider our historic satisfaction with the incumbent and they fell short - this led us to be more proactive in observing ERIC. Less than 3 months after a "service" ERIC's power generation figures did not tally with wind-speed. Realising that this was not acceptable, we approached another service provider who immediately provided some reassurances that we did not have prior.

So we decided to ditch the incumbent and signed with the alternative service provider. They immediately went about arranging an exploratory climb. Their findings were incredibly severe.

You may all be thinking "well of course they are going to blame the previous team for all the issues..." Well so are we - no one else has been there. The fact is that the new team took videos and photographs of the Nacelle and the condition it was in - you do not need to be an engineer to understand some of the images. They immediately went about repairing some faults, but concluded more investigatory work was required before presenting a complete assessment.

We have now had the complete assessment and it's going to take a lot of time and resources to bring our machine to a standard that will satisfy the incumbent service team and us.

We trusted the incumbent team to do right by us but this trust was severely abused - either they were liars or incompetent, there is no other explanation.

So I would like to offer the following advice:

1. Go out and buy a set of small stickers and initial them (100).
2. Go out and buy a high quality compact camera with memory (you can get these for £120-£180)
3. When the service team arrives, ask them to place the stickers all over the nacelle, adjacent to critical equipment such as
   1. High and low speed shafts
   2. Seals
   3. Gearbox (fill and drain points)
   4. Bearings
   5. Grease points
   6. All about the bed-plate
   7. All about the control gear
   8. All about the breaks
   9. Anemometer
   10. The Ladder, the nacelle clasps
   11. etc etc
4. Then ask the team to photograph all these areas with your camera and provide larger "zoomed out images"
5. Ask if they would be willing to video the entire service (including the climb) and send you a copy of the video (they can use smartphones or go-pro devices (hands free so no Health and Safety consequences).

If they refuse to do this, change your service partner. No second chances, no excuses. They are hiding something. You must ensure you can provide a mechanism so they can't cheat the images ("oh we will just take pictures and email you later.")

I will not name the incumbent or provide any specific details of the faults identified thus-far. We are incredibly disappointed to have been treated this way and feel betrayed. It will cost tens of thousands of pounds to remedy the situation, however we are certain that had we not changed we would be none the wiser and a lot poorer.

Finally, I know the incumbent and the new "partner" monitor this page, which is why I don't want to name anyone. I will consider recommending our new partner via private message, but to make sure your request is genuine, I would ask you to send the name of your existing partner and site location in your PM.

I DO NOT WORK FOR ANY RENEWABLE COMPANY, NOR DO WE BENEFIT IN ANY WAY FROM THIS POST OR ANY REFERRAL. THIS IS A GENUINE REPORT, AND I POST IN THE HOPE IT AVOIDS YOU SERIOUS HEARTACHE.

I would welcome any comments and will try to respond appropriately.

Thank you.

There were 2 fundamental issues.

1. the wind direction and
2. the wind speed.

It seemed we had a permanent wind speed of 2m/s yet the machine was generating over 50kW. So it would be difficult for the machine to know the conditions in which it was operating & if it was safe to do so. The incumbent again today reiterated that the anemometer was fine at service - we fundamentally dispute this can not possibly be so.

Courier said:

A permanent wind speed of 2m/s would appear to indicate that the feed from the sensor on the anemometer to your display has been compromised somewhere along the line.

In my experience anemometer readings are rarely stable for more than a few seconds at a time, let alone minutes - assuming they are calibrated in 0.001 m/s

What is the design cut in speed of the turbine - very few are below 3.5m/s and even at that they only produce less than 5% of rated output.

Click to expand...

Hello Courier - you are correct, this is basically what happened. The anemometer was failing. I apologise as my previous post was slightly confusing. I should have said the machine was registering between 0-2m/s yet generating over 50kW - we watched it for almost an hour during a very windy evening in January and I don't recall the machine generating less than 40kW or the wind speed exceeding 2.0m/s. When we checked the following day (quieter the wind speed did drop on the machine).

If the turbine is under recording wind speed it will not shut down in high winds when it should, thereby putting the turbine at considerable risk of major damage in stormy weather as it is not designed to operate over 25m/s gust wind speed. It is also quite impossible to test brakes without a fully functional anemometer – safe brake testing can only be performed between 4m/s and 8m/s.

The incumbent claimed that this fault must have occured that night, because they were actively monitoring the machine and would have noticed the anomaly. We saw the ananometer ourselves and we can not comprehend such wear in such a short space of time.
Thank you for your comment, I hope this clarifies that issue somewhat?