Dan Lenox
14th April 2009, 09:01
All,
About a week ago I had noticed in my logs that my 17' wind turbine stopped turning 3x in one day in which we had 10-15mph winds.
So that day I shut it down and climbed the 80' tower to take a closer look. From the top of the tower I noticed that the gap between stator and the back rotor appeared to be almost non-existant, while the air gap to the front rotor more than it was setup to be.
So it appeared that I needed to lower the telescoping stub and perform a stator adjustment.
Last Sunday the weather cooperated enough (44 degrees 12mph winds) to allowe me to climb the tower, lower the telescoping stub and check things out a bit further.
Sure enough nuts were not completely tight around stator, so I re-adjusted the stator so that it was centered and ensured that all nuts were tightened up. Got the telescoping stub re-raised after 3-1/2hrs total work.
After all done I settled onto the bench in our front yard and sure enough the wind started up the turbine in light winds.
That is until yesterday...
Repeat situation, according to logs turbine stopped rotating again, so I went outside to check things out a little closer. The turbine was slowly rotating - 90rpm in about a 12mph wind, which 'normally' it should be turning at about 120rpm.
Sure enough I heard some occasional dreaded squeaking! But at least it was not squealing...
It appears that the original problem was probably not that the stator had shifted but more likely that the bearings had loosened up inside the hub and allowed the turbine to sag slightly, thus causing a stator mis-alignment.
This was pretty much confirmed by my log files as the turbine output was less than previously recorded.
So what I had hoped would wait till the end of summer I have to do sooner than later - that is take the turbine off the telescoping stub down to the ground.
I hope to do that within the next week, at least at that time I can do a totoal teardown and inspection. And when reassembling add some needed additional air-gap so that the turbine is not so stalled out.
I will probably also add some additional offset of the turbine which should help out with my furling issues, and possibly some lightening of the tail vane.
In the long run this maintenance/inspection will be a good thing.
Dan Lenox
About a week ago I had noticed in my logs that my 17' wind turbine stopped turning 3x in one day in which we had 10-15mph winds.
So that day I shut it down and climbed the 80' tower to take a closer look. From the top of the tower I noticed that the gap between stator and the back rotor appeared to be almost non-existant, while the air gap to the front rotor more than it was setup to be.
So it appeared that I needed to lower the telescoping stub and perform a stator adjustment.
Last Sunday the weather cooperated enough (44 degrees 12mph winds) to allowe me to climb the tower, lower the telescoping stub and check things out a bit further.
Sure enough nuts were not completely tight around stator, so I re-adjusted the stator so that it was centered and ensured that all nuts were tightened up. Got the telescoping stub re-raised after 3-1/2hrs total work.
After all done I settled onto the bench in our front yard and sure enough the wind started up the turbine in light winds.
That is until yesterday...
Repeat situation, according to logs turbine stopped rotating again, so I went outside to check things out a little closer. The turbine was slowly rotating - 90rpm in about a 12mph wind, which 'normally' it should be turning at about 120rpm.
Sure enough I heard some occasional dreaded squeaking! But at least it was not squealing...
It appears that the original problem was probably not that the stator had shifted but more likely that the bearings had loosened up inside the hub and allowed the turbine to sag slightly, thus causing a stator mis-alignment.
This was pretty much confirmed by my log files as the turbine output was less than previously recorded.
So what I had hoped would wait till the end of summer I have to do sooner than later - that is take the turbine off the telescoping stub down to the ground.
I hope to do that within the next week, at least at that time I can do a totoal teardown and inspection. And when reassembling add some needed additional air-gap so that the turbine is not so stalled out.
I will probably also add some additional offset of the turbine which should help out with my furling issues, and possibly some lightening of the tail vane.
In the long run this maintenance/inspection will be a good thing.
Dan Lenox