Doug Foskey
26th June 2011, 00:07
Hi,
I am an Electronics Technician of senior years (but not to retirement age yet), who has bought a Hummer 5Kw wind turbine direct from China. I did search the web before purchase, but unfortunately did not find your site. I live near Byron Bay, NSW, Australia.
My System is 5Kw Hummer, with Hummer Rectifier, Hummer (Chinese Siemans PLC) controller, & due to Australian regulations, a Power-one Aurora 6Kw wind inverter. The kit is mounted on a Hummer supplied 13M hinged tower, with a Hummer supplied Ram & pump.
Now to the issues (of course there are issues: hopefully they can be resolved.)
-Noise: the unit is incredibly noisy. This is not helped by the incorrect data for the MPPT table being supplied by Hummer. In a 5m/s wind, it is currently making 62dbA of noise, caused by the transfer of vibration to the tower which tends to resonate with the vibration (so the tower is not matched properly to the head)
- Earth Leakage Fault. Yet to be really investigated. (seems intermittent to make it easy to find!)
- Electric hydraulic pump: This is one to watch for, because it may happen to others: The shuttle valve in the hydraulic direction valve was sticky. I found this when after a few ups & downs, the ram stuck half way up. Extremely disconcerting to say the least, & of course it was nearly dark when it happened! Next day I had to release the overpressure valve (under the plastic cap below the hydraulic valve). This let the mast slowly lower to the ground. On investigation, I found the shuttle in the control valve was sticky. I polished the valve body by pulling a rag through it, & dressed the edges of the valve with a fine diamond lap (to remove burrs). After resetting the overpressure valve (by setting it while pumping the tower up, but with the restrictors almost closed, the O/P valve can be set to the correct pressure)
-24v supply in the head: seems to fail after a few days running (as in shuts down) Powering off, then on after a time resets it. I am not enamoured with the design of this section: 240v AC up the stick does not seem good practice to me. I have a spare 24V supply coming.
-bugs: as if there were not enough bugs in the system, I was attacked by real ones! This was unbelievable: seemingly millions of insects we call stink bugs. When I take the tower down next, I will be fitting an insect proof cage around the power supply & switching relays. I think everything else will be OK if the little buggers get in again!
-MPPT: I need to reset the MPPT table in the inverter to try to reduce the noise, that I hope is coming from Blade stall. I have purchased a RS232>485 interface (not worth building now: less than $10 from Hong Kong)
-Controller issues: everything seems to be working OK, but after reading Cor van Houtum´s messages, I think I need to trim the controller parameters somewhat. I will also need to make some Overvoltage Crow Barring protection. Could someone please point me to the details of what is required for the protection & programming? I am also a Linux user, so would love to hear from someone who has got the Windows programs running under Wine: trhe windows emulator in Linux. I can use Windoze, but prefer Linux.
General:
I think the system seems to be reasonably well built, but could be improved. I actually sent (to Hummer) an edited version of the hydraulic raising & lowering procedure because I felt someone could be hurt by the lack of safety instructions sent with the Hydraulic system. (I can send these to others who can use/modify them, but at the users risk if others would like to view my re-write).
regards Doug
I am an Electronics Technician of senior years (but not to retirement age yet), who has bought a Hummer 5Kw wind turbine direct from China. I did search the web before purchase, but unfortunately did not find your site. I live near Byron Bay, NSW, Australia.
My System is 5Kw Hummer, with Hummer Rectifier, Hummer (Chinese Siemans PLC) controller, & due to Australian regulations, a Power-one Aurora 6Kw wind inverter. The kit is mounted on a Hummer supplied 13M hinged tower, with a Hummer supplied Ram & pump.
Now to the issues (of course there are issues: hopefully they can be resolved.)
-Noise: the unit is incredibly noisy. This is not helped by the incorrect data for the MPPT table being supplied by Hummer. In a 5m/s wind, it is currently making 62dbA of noise, caused by the transfer of vibration to the tower which tends to resonate with the vibration (so the tower is not matched properly to the head)
- Earth Leakage Fault. Yet to be really investigated. (seems intermittent to make it easy to find!)
- Electric hydraulic pump: This is one to watch for, because it may happen to others: The shuttle valve in the hydraulic direction valve was sticky. I found this when after a few ups & downs, the ram stuck half way up. Extremely disconcerting to say the least, & of course it was nearly dark when it happened! Next day I had to release the overpressure valve (under the plastic cap below the hydraulic valve). This let the mast slowly lower to the ground. On investigation, I found the shuttle in the control valve was sticky. I polished the valve body by pulling a rag through it, & dressed the edges of the valve with a fine diamond lap (to remove burrs). After resetting the overpressure valve (by setting it while pumping the tower up, but with the restrictors almost closed, the O/P valve can be set to the correct pressure)
-24v supply in the head: seems to fail after a few days running (as in shuts down) Powering off, then on after a time resets it. I am not enamoured with the design of this section: 240v AC up the stick does not seem good practice to me. I have a spare 24V supply coming.
-bugs: as if there were not enough bugs in the system, I was attacked by real ones! This was unbelievable: seemingly millions of insects we call stink bugs. When I take the tower down next, I will be fitting an insect proof cage around the power supply & switching relays. I think everything else will be OK if the little buggers get in again!
-MPPT: I need to reset the MPPT table in the inverter to try to reduce the noise, that I hope is coming from Blade stall. I have purchased a RS232>485 interface (not worth building now: less than $10 from Hong Kong)
-Controller issues: everything seems to be working OK, but after reading Cor van Houtum´s messages, I think I need to trim the controller parameters somewhat. I will also need to make some Overvoltage Crow Barring protection. Could someone please point me to the details of what is required for the protection & programming? I am also a Linux user, so would love to hear from someone who has got the Windows programs running under Wine: trhe windows emulator in Linux. I can use Windoze, but prefer Linux.
General:
I think the system seems to be reasonably well built, but could be improved. I actually sent (to Hummer) an edited version of the hydraulic raising & lowering procedure because I felt someone could be hurt by the lack of safety instructions sent with the Hydraulic system. (I can send these to others who can use/modify them, but at the users risk if others would like to view my re-write).
regards Doug