Unmatched                       Efficiencies

System Protection and Controls

We feel that one of the most important features any wind turbine system can offer, is a fail-safe method of shutting itself down in the event of electrical or mechanical failure. We employ several means of doing this, along with ongoing monitoring right from our offices to insure your system is operating at peak efficiency.
Active Pitch / Passive Park
Pitching the blades to a park position (turning the blades 90° to the wind) is arguably one of the safest and least stressful ways of bringing a wind turbine to a stop. A quick, yet controlled parking of the blades will without fail bring the rotation of the turbine to a stop.  Each blade on our turbine is spring loaded toward the park position. Only when fully under mechanical and electrical control can we pitch the blades into a run position. In any other situation, the springs pull the blades to park by default.
Active Yaw
Our Model DT-30 wind turbine yaw position is controlled by a closed-loop electric motor. This offers an additional method of shutting the turbine down, by yawing out of the wind.

Dump Load
If the grid goes down for any reason, our turbine employs a "dump load" to control the speed of the blades until the passive pitching of the blades slows and parks the turbine. This insures that the blades cannot "free wheel", or accelerate prior to the blades being pitched far enough to start slowing the turbine.  - more info. -
Accelerometer

Our turbine also employs a 3-demensional accelerometer as a motion sensor. The accelerometer is programmable as to how much movement is allowable under normal operating conditions. It can be set to shut down the turbine if any movement/vibrations/wobbles/out-of-balance condition should arise that exceeds the limit you set. The most common situation is icing which throws the blades out of balance and could cause serious damage or failure if not detected and the turbine shut down. Other events could be physical or mechanical disturbances, or even a lightning strike that takes a chunk out of a blade. The objective being to identify any unusual movements and shut the machine down before any damage to the turbine is done, beyond the original cause for the shutdown.
Monitoring over the Internet

Each turbine can be monitored by the engineering staff right from their desks. Not only can the turbines be started or stopped from our offices, but a myriad of environmental, operating, and production information is available in real time. This allows us to very easily and quickly determine if each machine is operating within the parameters of what we would expect for the wind conditions available. Once a baseline is established for each turbine location, even something as benign as determining when the blades need to be cleaned of bug residue can be identified and scheduled right from our offices.        more info.

Inverter
Our turbine and inverter are in constant communication. Should a fault occur on the inverter side, the turbine will be immediately commanded to park, initiating both a blade pitch and yawing to 90°. Everything from the Utility grid voltage, through the inverter and turbine has to be fully within parameters and operational, or the system will shut itself down.