Delta / Zeeland trial - results update March 2009

The latest results have come in from the Delta / Zeeland trial of small wind turbines in the Netherlands. They do not normally release public results at one month intervals so I expect it is because they want to announce some news.

Their email gives the following information:

1. The Renewable Device Swift turbine was removed on 31 January 2009 and will be replaced by a Raum 1.3.

2. The Raum 1.3 turbine has been installed but the inverter has not been installed yet. Installation is expected to be completed in mid April 2009.

3. The Turby has had a fault during all of February 2009.

Looking at the data it seems to support all the trends that were in place, i.e.:

- The vertical axis turbines are the worse performers.

- The Ampair, Fortis, and SWW Skystream are the best performers.

- The Zephyr AirDolphin is technically a good performer but commercially so expensive it is not commercially attractive. In fairness to Ampair I should point out that our installer has put an price on the Ampair that is unusually high so we too are labouring under an heavy economic burden.

The strongest wind month was January with an annual average of 4.4m/s. Some people are commenting that winds on this site are unusually low but I disagree as they are in fact typical of the 12m height wind speeds at most rural locations where substantial communities live. It is extremely unusual to find large groups of people living in winds of higher than this and recent work in the UK tends to support our observations (see the Warwick Wind Trials and the EST microwind trials).

Other comments I have heard are that there is wind shadowing occurring between turbines. There may be some truth in this as the turbines are on a line SSE-NNW and the average wind has come from almost dead S. So anyone is immediately downstream of the Skystream (the most efficient wind harvester and with a large diameter) coulfd reasonably raise this as an issue. There is obviously scope here for a quick undergraduate project to explore this issue further. I don't actually know the sequence of turbines in the line.

The results can be downloaded here:

.Zeeland%20small%20wind%20turbine%20testfield%20%2812m+%29.pdf

As always those manufacturers who have had the courage to participate are to be commended. Doing stuff like this in public is difficult for small companies. Also the Delta / Zeeland trial organisers are doing a good job and showing that pretty basic but independent trials can yield very informative results for consumers.

Delta / Zeeland trial update - November 2008

I have added in the price/kWh analysis on the last two slides of the presentation for the first six months of data. I didn't have time to do this before. I assume 20-year lifetimes for all units, no maintenance, and no change in wind regime. This is simplistic of course but occasionally I have to do the day job.

Delta Zeeland wind turbine trial presentation update (look at the bottom of this blog post)

Some folk have done a bit more digging into the trial:

- Olino
- Newenergyfocus

One of these includes a full NPV analysis.

The Zeeland folk have commented that they expected a 6m/s average and indeed it will be interesting to see what the average is after we have had the winter episodes in.

The Swift folk have commented about inverter tuning in one of the reports on the trial and it looks as if they will do a spot of tuning. The holy grail is auto-adaptive control algorithms which I know were discussed at least three years ago (because I answered a question at the BRE microwind seminar regarding them, ironically when standing next to one of the XCO2 / Quiet Revolution chaps: I think they now use an auto-adaptive algorithm in their QR6 unit but that's just a guess on my part) but surely have been openly discussed for longer, I've known about them for over twenty years when I was at college.

As I say in my blog I sincerely congratulate everybody brave enough to do public performance trials. In our experience it gets easier the more you do. Also as one consultant commented to me today "it's not what your problems are, it's more how you respond to them".

I've had a comment in that I am being a mite aggressive in my discussion re Tesco. I've had a look at what I wrote. To make it clear:
- I think Ropatec are a very robust VAWT with good engineers at the helm,
- I think that Ropatec made exactly the same sort of mistake that could happen to all of us (and which I have pointed out that something similar did happen to Ampair) and best wishes over the next six months,
- I think that the data shows that all the VAWTs are not (yet) good producers (and I'd love to see data on better performance in the future),
- I think that the consultant who conducted the initial pre-purchase analysis for Tesco owes Tesco a refund,
- I think that Tesco are to be congratulated for trying.

So well done Ropatec; well done to Tesco; (not mentioned but well done to Llumarlite who are the Ropatec representative in the UK); and what a shoddy job by the Tesco's expert consultant who I know did not understand the advice he was given and tried to bluff which is always a sign of an unprofessional professional.

Like I said and will continue to say, congratulations to all who have the courage to participate.

Ampair%20for%20BWEA%20conference%20%28rev2%2C%20October%202008%29.pdf