Bergey Excel

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Comments

  • ChrisOlson
    ChrisOlson Banned Posts: 1,807 ✭✭
    Re: Bergey Excel
    NorthGuy wrote: »
    I have Xantrex XW6048 and 10KW Generac. In real life it happened to be more like 8KW because above this it starts losing frequncy.

    That's pretty typical. If it's a Guardian series it's only designed to run at 50% load continuous.
    --
    Chris
  • NEOH
    NEOH Solar Expert Posts: 74 ✭✭
    Re: Bergey Excel
    ChrisOlson wrote: »
    That's pretty typical. If it's a Guardian series it's only designed to run at 50% load continuous.
    --
    Chris

    Chris,

    That Bergey is located in "good" wind zone for Ohio. If the school can't get that Bergey to produce at their windy location then 99.999% of the people in the state of Ohio should never ever look at Wind power. I bet if you got your hands on that Bergey, you could get it to crankout some watts!

    A perfectly good Bergey Excel is a terrible thing to waste ...
  • ChrisOlson
    ChrisOlson Banned Posts: 1,807 ✭✭
    Re: Bergey Excel

    I have no use for one. I have no powerlines to hook it too. And the off-grid battery charging models are too big and require too expensive of a tower. I put up three smaller ones and get all the power I need at a fraction of the cost.

    Frankly, I've never seen yet where a grid-tied Excel will ever pay for itself, and I know and have seen several of them - all in good wind locations. If you want to put one up to be "green" or reduce your carbon footprint - fine. But don't put one up to make or save money with it.
    --
    Chris
  • NEOH
    NEOH Solar Expert Posts: 74 ✭✭
    Re: Bergey Excel
    ChrisOlson wrote: »
    I have no use for one. I have no powerlines to hook it too. And the off-grid battery charging models are too big and require too expensive of a tower. I put up three smaller ones and get all the power I need at a fraction of the cost.

    Frankly, I've never seen yet where a grid-tied Excel will ever pay for itself, and I know and have seen several of them - all in good wind locations. If you want to put one up to be "green" or reduce your carbon footprint - fine. But don't put one up to make or save money with it.
    --
    Chris

    Sorry, I was just thinking out loud ...
    I meant to say, given your windy environment (great for testing purposes) and given your experience, I think you could figure out what is wrong with that bird.
    I don't understand why the school can't or won't fix it.
    It would be awesome to read "The Bergey Excel is producing 10 kilowatts!"
    Currently, the school has a very expensive but cool looking lawn ornament that costs them $4,806 per year after the SELL all electricity to the grid - ouch !!!
    I think, they are in their 6th year of 15 year loan.

    There is a very large scale Grid Wind Turbine Farm up & running not far from the school in North-West Ohio.
  • boB
    boB Solar Expert Posts: 1,030 ✭✭✭✭
    Re: Bergey Excel

    I have seen the Bergey XL turbine and the Tier GT inverter put out 12+ KW if that helps.

    boB
  • ChrisOlson
    ChrisOlson Banned Posts: 1,807 ✭✭
    Re: Bergey Excel
    NEOH wrote: »
    Currently, the school has a very expensive but cool looking lawn ornament that costs them $4,806 per year after the SELL all electricity to the grid - ouch !!!

    Producing 10 or 12 kW and producing 40 kWh/day is two different things. You don't need a "windy" site with high sustained winds for a wind turbine to work. You need a site that has good average winds in the 10-12 mph range because what the turbine produces at 12 mph is more important than what it produces at 25 mph. The 10-12 mph winds are your normal everyday thing. 25 mph sustained winds only happen when a frontal system moves thru with tight pressure gradients, and sustained average wind speeds that high only happen in a very few places on earth.

    I've long advocated that wind turbines should have a rated power at 12 mph, not 25 or 30. Then people would have a more realistic expectation as to their power production capability. Your "400 watt" Air-X is now rated at 40 watts, which is closer to what it really is. And your "10 kW" Excel is now a 1 kW turbine, which is closer to what it really is day in and day out. The manufacturers rate their wind turbines at wind speeds that you rarely get, then come up with energy production numbers based on ideal conditions, with usually a Weibull curve strapped to it to make it better yet - then you get into the real world and it don't even come close. I've seen it repeated over and over and over - including with utility scale machines.

    It's like putting up 10 kW of solar panels and expected to see 10 kW output just because the sun is shining - that ain't how it works.
    --
    Chris
  • NEOH
    NEOH Solar Expert Posts: 74 ✭✭
    Re: Bergey Excel
    inetdog wrote: »
    An additional way of looking at it is that it is a lot cheaper to have both a generator and a (cheap, small, fuel guzzling?) backup generator available than a complete backup solar or wind system. :-)

    You can have extra panels, two wind turbines, a couple each of charge controllers and inverters, but you will have only one battery bank.
    This was a Grid-Tie configuration not an off-line setup.
    The school was trying to show the "benefits" of Green Energy.
    Now they report a yearly LOSS of $4,800 - YIKES !!!
  • NEOH
    NEOH Solar Expert Posts: 74 ✭✭
    Re: Bergey Excel
    ChrisOlson wrote: »
    Producing 10 or 12 kW and producing 40 kWh/day is two different things. You don't need a "windy" site with high sustained winds for a wind turbine to work. You need a site that has good average winds in the 10-12 mph range because what the turbine produces at 12 mph is more important than what it produces at 25 mph. The 10-12 mph winds are your normal everyday thing. 25 mph sustained winds only happen when a frontal system moves thru with tight pressure gradients, and sustained average wind speeds that high only happen in a very few places on earth.

    I've long advocated that wind turbines should have a rated power at 12 mph, not 25 or 30. Then people would have a more realistic expectation as to their power production capability. Your "400 watt" Air-X is now rated at 40 watts, which is closer to what it really is. And your "10 kW" Excel is now a 1 kW turbine, which is closer to what it really is day in and day out. The manufacturers rate their wind turbines at wind speeds that you rarely get, then come up with energy production numbers based on ideal conditions, with usually a Weibull curve strapped to it to make it better yet - then you get into the real world and it don't even come close. I've seen it repeated over and over and over - including with utility scale machines.

    It's like putting up 10 kW of solar panels and expected to see 10 kW output just because the sun is shining - that ain't how it works.
    --
    Chris
    Chris,
    OK, "windy" wasn't the proper technical term.
    Agreed, 12 MPH or even 11 MPH is much more typical of the average wind speed in most populated areas of the USA.


    Here is the wind info for Lima, Ohio weather station that is near the school ...

    Monthly MPH Mean Values

    ===== MIN AVG MAX
    Jan = 05. 11. 18.
    Feb = 04. 11. 18.
    Mar = 03. 11. 18.
    Apr = 04. 11. 18.
    May = 03. 09. 15.
    Jun = 02. 08. 14.
    Jul = 01. 07. 13.
    Aug = 01. 06. 13
    Sep = 01. 07. 13.
    Oct = 02. 08. 14.
    Nov = 04. 10. 16.
    Dec = 05. 11. 18.



    The values displayed above were interpreted by me from the chart here:
    http://weatherspark.com/averages/29635/Lima-Ohio-United-States

    Click on the OHIO map here to enlarge:
    http://www.windpoweringamerica.gov/wind_resource_maps.asp?stateab=oh
    Then located the city of LIMA in North-West area.
    I realize the school's tower is not a 80 Meters but that is flat land with strong winds aloft.

    Is Lima, Ohio a "good" location for a Wind Turbine given the above info?

    There is a Large Commercial Grade Grid Wind Turbine Farm in North-West Ohio near Lima and Findlay.
  • westbranch
    westbranch Solar Expert Posts: 5,183 ✭✭✭✭
    Re: Bergey Excel

    Our Gov Gambling agency has a motto that I think applies well here

    "Know your limit, Play within it", in this case the limit would be 10 mph
     
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    West Chilcotin, BC, Canada
  • ChrisOlson
    ChrisOlson Banned Posts: 1,807 ✭✭
    Re: Bergey Excel
    NEOH wrote: »
    Is Lima, Ohio a "good" location for a Wind Turbine given the above info?

    Those wind speeds are just fine for a wind turbine. But don't expect no 25,000 kWh/year from an Excel in that location. With the low average wind speeds in the summer and fall months I would say 5000-6000 kWh/year is more realistic. And that's about what I get from three 3.5 meter machines in a year. The Excel has about 100 more square feet of swept area than my three 3.5's so it might do a bit better on my site.

    But the difference is that my turbines don't have to "pay for themselves". They're paid for the day I put them up and anything they generate is free. They generate power on days when solar doesn't work, and at night when solar doesn't work. They prevent me from having to run the generator so it doesn't matter if they generate $50 worth of electricity in a year or $500. I have no need to put numbers to it or make a profit on it because they're worth their weight in gold to me on a cold winter night with a stiff 15 mph north wind and a -30 wind chill when the generator doesn't have to run.

    These poor people at this school trying to show that you're going get a wind turbine or solar panels to pay for themselves is flawed from the start. You can not generate your electricity for less money than you can buy it for from the utility. It is more expensive to live off-grid than it is to buy utility power, and that's a fact that not many people realize.

    The installers can give you the silver lined sales pitch and show you the numbers on what this equipment SHOULD produce in the perfect world. But the world is rarely perfect. And that is the lesson that the Bergey installed at this school can teach people - it does not pay to do grid-tied RE systems without some sort of government subsidy or utility kickback.
    --
    Chris