Wind Turbine install from start to finish - a photo diary

[bmannz]

I have always had a bit of of a thing for otherpower, water turbines as a kid, PV systems later on, there was this thing with a methane digester but thats probably best left in the past...

We recently bought a bit of land up north and it was miles (literally) from the grid, so on went some Jinko PV & Outback Inverters thanks to my man Dwayne at Taspac.  We had it up and running just in time for Christmas, which is bang in the middle of summer here in NZ. 

The $50.00 worth of recycled 300AH Sonnenschein batteries from the local scrapppie lasted great until winter when they started to go down more than they went up.  One afternoon with a cold beer by a hot fire while struggling to hear the rain on the roof over the banging of the ancient Genny I started dreaming of wind power. 

Now I have had a tiny bit of experience with this thanks to a very clever chap by the name of Mike Lawley from Eco Innovations, you may know of his outfit as Powerspout,  I attended a "live in" course at his training facility in Taranaki years ago over a weekend and during this we got to setup PV, Wind and check out some Micro Hydro.

I did a bit of research online as you do, and settled on a 1.5kw Chinese Turbine from Crystal at HYE Energy - dont judge me!  The price was right  (not a lot) and as an importer and distributor of electronics from all over the world I was ready for a pretty shady MTBF from the get go.

So this thing arrived and we chucked it up on pole in front of the house to test it out while plans were made for its final mount over a couple of bottles of bubbles.

I bought an anemometer and after a few months of gathering windspeed data I had a spot in mind.  Now I expect NZ is like the rest of the world and theres a permit required for breathing, so I called the nice lady at the local council and they had no idea what a wind turbine came under in the regs.  We decided the closest thing it resembled in the building code was an aerial and no, there was no permit required for that.

From the wind data I knew I needed an 8m tower and liked the idea of a tilt up.  After checking with a reference, I brought one from Aaron at huayaturbine.com for US$850.  The freight from Quingdao port in China to Auckland NZ was US$30.00, yes thats THIRTY DOLLARS.  Unbelievable. 

Excited like a kid at Christmas to get this up and running, one of our big national carriers Mainfreight then quoted me over $300 to get it just two hours up the country and I still had to collect it from their depot.  Because they had earlier cocked up the shipment date they then billed me holding charges over Christmas - As5h0l3s.  never again.

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Aaron sent me the engineering drawings for the base foundations, he had provided the starters and I needed to arrange the mesh cage.



Instructions were a little sketchy at first but it turned out the factory boy forgot to include them in the package - A couple of emails later and we were off and rocking. 

A quick trip into town to Busck Concrete who nicely bent me up some hoops and starters, the neighbour popped by to say Hi and gave us a hand with the wire ties

[bmannz]

We popped up the hill and after pacing a respectable distance from the boundary, marked the hole with some pretty orange spraypaint -



Aarons drawings called for a 1m x 1m hole that was 1.2m deep, I'll be buggered If i'm going to dig that big a hole in clay by hand so rattling and clanking up the side of the hill, the old 5 tonne CAT digger crawled into place.



Alex hopped into the hole to finish off the sides by hand as we didn't want to make it too big and leave ourselves with a low tide when the concrete truck came up the next day -just look at the smile on her happy little face - I think she might have missed her calling



After a fun afternoon in the sun on the side of the hill we boxed it up with some timber that I had won for $1.00 on trademe  (thats ebay to you fullas from overseas) If you don't own a nailgun yet, go out tomorrow and buy one, they are worth their weight in gold.



Next we dropped the reinforcing cage into the hole and ran into the first problem of the day....

[bmannz]

The challenge was the cage needs to be halfway down the column of concrete and fairly level but not touching the starters Aaron sent over

A quick planning session was called (yes it involved beer) and we figured out we could dangle the cage off a couple of bits of timber sitting over the hole.



A bit of head scratching and an email to Aaron and we figured out the correct order of rods, washers, nuts and adjusty tube thingy



A couple of pipes were laid into the foundation to carry the wires and that it was it for the day

[bmannz]

Concrete Day.

Early the next morning our concrete truck arrived, my engineering friend Tracey is very excited by things like concrete trucks and i'm not sure she had slept a wink.



We had dropped the fence to get the digger in so he just drove up the hill in super low gear then backed this thing as far back as he dared go before the airbrakes let go - this guy had balls of steel.



We used a variable frequency hydraulic vibrator to ensure even distribution of the concrete around the reinforcing members (just kidding it was a long stick)



With the help of Josh, Helen and Aiden we had the deed done in no time and it was back down the hill while the concrete set for some well deserved refreshing health tonic (hops are natural you know)

[bmannz]

The Duct...



Thanks to a friend at an electrical wholesalers I had secured some 32mm duct at a very good rate, however it came in 1000m lengths and weighed about 200kg



The trick was going to be rolling it out as we mole ploughed it with the tractor.  Using a spare cable drum as a spindle with bits of timber bolted onto the side we rigged up the tractor as a duct laying machine.



We had a bit of a fail getting the mole plough deep enough into the ground.  I wanted it down 600mm but even with Ivans enormous weight on the back of the tractor it just wasn't cutting it  (haha see what I did there)



A quick look around and after some consulting with a professional rigger we mounted an old cast iron bath to the mole plough with timber posts and ratchet tie downs and then filled it with dirt - that did the trick nicely.



After a couple of practice runs on the beginner slopes we took the John Deere up to the wind turbine site and with the "Roll Over Protection" bar engaged and assh0le firmly clenched I put the tractor into the lowest gear I could find and off we crawled down the precipitous slope.

I have to say the pictures simply do not convey how steep this hill was!

[bmannz]

By the end of the day there were green pipes sprouting out of the ground all over the place but the job was done and it was time for a celebratory beer



The next session involved dropping in the concrete turning pits - I had won 9 of these for $1.00 on Trademe  (NZ's ebay) as they were sitting in this guys yard and he wanted them gone. The pits go at key locations along the duct run to make rodding them easier and they are gold for changing direction.



A couple of weekends and a lot of help from Scott and Dee and three of these these were installed giving me a complete route from the turbine right back to the shed approx 180m away as the cable runs.



Here you can see the pit sitting to the right of the manshed which contains the batteries and inverters and assorted giblets that make it all go.

[bmannz]

Cable Day...



My Electrical Wholesaler friend came to the party yet again with some great rates on 4 Core 6mm circular flex (orange drum) and some 4mm TPS (timber drum) to power the gate controller nearby. We also ran some data and power for a PTZ camera to go up the turbine tower.



The ducts were pretty full and a serious amount of hauling lubricant was needed to get them thru the 100m sections of duct, friends Ruth and Shaun were seconded to get the cables in. We used radios to coordinate the hauling and the quadbike got a lot of use running up and down from from pit to pit



Anyone who has ever installed ducts in the ground will tell you that no matter how well you glue them and seal the ends they are always wet and this goes double for turning pits, so I made sure all the joins were done in gel flooded boxes (they affectionately call these snot boxes at the trade counters here)

I got a mix of big ones from Tyco for the 6mm joins and some smaller ones for the camera power cable joins.

[bmannz]

Painting Day



Wynn Fraser Paints hooked me up with a two pot epoxy system.  It turned out to be a fairly complex 5 pot solution of degreaser and the A and B pots for both the primer and top coat.  It was so tricky there was a two page document telling you how to put it all together.

I figured that after going to all this trouble we might as well do what we could to protect the steel, it just seemed odd that the paint was half the price of the entire tower!

Unfortunately they mislabeled something and we didn't have the B part of something so a quick phone call and they had one of their guys drive 1/2 and hour out to us to bring out the right pot - fantastic service!



Friends Dee and Scott were back for another round and together we got the paint on in no time

[bmannz]

The Erection.



It turns out it takes a 1.2 tonne block of concrete 28 days to set.  So up early one morning a month after concrete day we finally laid out the foundation bolts and figured out what the adjusty tube was for - it turns out that these are used to level the tower.



Our neighbours Luke and Jess turned up with their dad Kevin who had a hiab on his truck, problem was it was too wet to get it up the hill so we wound up flying the tower with webbing straps off the digger

A lot of pushing and coaxing and she was in place, tiling the tower down and bolting the turbine on was a breeze as Aaron had prepped the tower top to suit the HYE mounting footprint.



The manual said never to raise the turbine on a breezy day, but after 6 months of preparation I wasn't going to be put off any further so with a gentle push the tower stood up straight and releasing the brake on the controller in the shed and away it went.

[MattM]

Thanks for sharing.  Looks like a family event.

[bmannz]

The Disaster

About a month later I was digging an overland flow path around the bridge over the drain when this happened...



I totally crushed the duct into a Z shape and dragged about a foot back out of the nearest pit.  Of course it was the duct with the CAT6 in - the most fragile cable!

I opened up the duct carefully with a multitool and amazingly there was no damage to the cable at all except for when I slipped with the cutters and nicked the CAT6

So it turns out that ICE CAT6 is able to withstand a 5 tonne digger blade - good to know.

Over the following year I had a few hassles with the controller crapping out (see this post for more on how to fix an HYE controller  http://www.fieldlines.com/index.php/topic,148561.msg1041907.html#msg1041907 ) but the net result was that instead of the voltage dropping every night like this:



Whenever there was a reasonable breeze the state of charge looked more like this:



So now we have a second string to our offgrid system and now when it blows rather than getting annoyed at the wind we walk around the house turning everything on just because we can.

Thanks for reading and thanks to everyone who helped get this puppy up and running - couldn't have done it without you!

To check out my next crazy project take a look here:
http://www.fieldlines.com/index.php/topic,149308.0.html

[bmannz]

Hi Matt, yes it certainly was - about 10 families over 6 months by the end of it!

[SparWeb]

Hi Bmannz,
Great project!   Sure looks like a "tower" project rather than a "turbine" project - but I know too well myself that's how it goes.

[eigenmorph]

A lot of hard work and expense. I hope it serves you well.

Here we live in a hole, so windpower isn't practical. We are sometimes kept awake at night by the whooshing of the commercial wind turbines 25 miles away. Fortunately we are upwind of the turbines under prevailing conditions and the noise of the wind in the forestry next to us is random.

It seems you also get sunshine where you are. It's jealous I am. This year we have had a total of about 6 Gin & Tonic days. Still, we don't have to worry about water for the beasts.

An interesting and informative read. Thanks.

Jim Cahill

 

[bmannz]

Hi Jim, thanks for that - I hope so too!

If there's one place in the world I'd live other than NZ it's Bantry or anywhere on the Ring of Kerry on the southwest of your beautiful island - just stunning countryside and wonderful people -

I don't suppose a noise cancelling system would work for your wind turbine noise?