The Zeiger Family Homestead Blog

The day we had trouble with the wind generator got even weirder. However, we seem to have solved the problem!

Late in the morning, the generator just flat stopped working! It slowed down until it no longer charged, moving slowly as if the brake had been applied. We grabbed the generator manual, and began perusing the troubleshooting table. The symptoms we saw, once we eliminated the obvious (blades on backward? No! Bad stator winding? Not likely, after this long!) we were left with a fair range of possibilities. Narrowing those down involved some diagnostic tests. Soon, we narrowed it down to either a wiring problem on the tower, or a malfunction of the generator itself. I grew nervous anticipating a climb up the tower in freezing, 30-knot winds, and the likelihood of having to remove the generator from the tower, pack it to town, and mail it to the manufacturer for repair at a minimum cost of about $80, not to mention up to a month without electricity. Luckily, I began to grasp at straws . . . . Continue reading →

Sunday morning we listened anxiously to the wind generator, trying to sort out sounds that seemed new, but also uncomfortably familiar. As usual, since the factory installed “marine” lubricant in the furling shaft flushed out soon after installation, the machine moaned and roared in certain wind angles as the prop angled through the wind. In addition, at certain wind speeds we could hear a vibration that we haven’t heard lately. Typically, as we listened for the new sound, the “normal” sound morphed into something different, something more sinister.

We’d become alert in the morning, when I turned off the brake that had stopped the generator through the windy night. It took too long for the generator to start back up again. This may have been become the north wind at the moment I turned it on came from over the ridge, an angle that baffles the wind too much to drive the generator properly. That might have been it, but it’s hard to tell. When it did start up, I was paying attention, listening for changes, and of course, I found them.

Compounding the whole issue is the date. These first weeks after the end of our Christmas celebration have not been good for our wind generators. Continue reading →