Freak Storm Damages Wind Turbine Components

It was very sudden.
Just before midnight on Wednesday, May 19th, peaceful sleep dramatically ended with an intense sound...actually two intense sounds.

The sound of a horrendous wind nearly tearing branches from 30-foot fir trees not far from the open bedroom window had us immediately sitting up in bed, listening intently.  In the dim light of a clear sky I could see long branches being whipped like a flailing octopus from the west (or northwest).

The wind was quickly second in importance as the virtual roar of the wind turbine's blades reached a crescendo previously unheard.  My husband and I looked at one another and both said "It's not turning out of the wind," referring to the 10 kw wind turbine's blades.

The next morning at breakfast we tried to describe the wind turbine noise and couldn't exactly get it right.
"Like a jet engine," offered my husband, "increasing in intensity."  I nodded in agreement and looked out the window at a now-gentler breeze over the property.

"The turbine is dead, not turning at all," I admitted, "something's wrong."

Within five minutes I had opened the shop door and looked over the components.  Did the heat-dump go on?  I felt its exterior, it was cool.  I looked at the user panel, windspeed reading was 4 meters per second, yet the blades were not turning.  And RPM read zero.  Odd, it was even facing into the wrong direction.
Dogvane read Normal, no errors.  I glanced at the two 6 kw Aurora inverters.  No power lights were on, nothing was showing on the inverters.

Paul Wende, contractor was called and arrived mid-morning.  Inside the controller box he examined the "rectifier block", adding that "it's fried."  Minutes later, the prognosis was "no it's not, it's fine...but both  inverters are fried."

Paul assured me that both inverters will be returned to the manufacturer and that they're under a five-year warranty.


Downtime!


 "I always thought downtime was a good thing," intones Kia.

Not in this case!

Fortunately, no fire ensued.