Part ownership of a Ripple Wind Turbine, fancy it?

[Joeboy]

Its perked up and is now matching the local wind farm (Pen y Cymoedd) nearby.

https://renewables-map.robinhawkes.com/ ... 688/-3.613

I'm hoping 50%+ tomorrow if its fixed.

I actually felt quite bad quoting a resource that you brought Nowty! It is absolutely excellent. Ah, got another for the list. Literally just remembered. Cheers!

[nowty]

Its perked up and is now matching the local wind farm (Pen y Cymoedd) nearby.

https://renewables-map.robinhawkes.com/ ... 688/-3.613

I'm hoping 50%+ tomorrow if its fixed.

I actually felt quite bad quoting a resource that you brought Nowty! It is absolutely excellent. Ah, got another for the list. Literally just remembered. Cheers!

That site was actually found by Adokforme back in April, so I feel bad now.

[nowty]

GF back to 70%+ output which is exceeding its nearest neighbour wind farm.

[AE-NMidlands]

The service technicians found a defective seal between the oil tank and the valve block of the hydraulic unit. This was replaced and the system cleaned after the leak was eliminated. The turbine was put back into operation after checking the pressures and the proper functioning of the hydraulic system.

a real Achilles' heel...

[Joeboy]

It has been good to see Ripple communicate effectively and with decent detail through this latest downtime. A 08.30hrs breakdown on Monday with comms from Vensys to Ripple to allow them to inform their local maintenance people, get the team to site fault find, repair etc and turbine outputting again by 17.00hrs on Wednesday is a window of 32 hours from Vensys seeing the fault in Europe.

That in itself is impressive as was the improved communication through that window from Ripple to We the owners. Big thumbs up for that.

One area that could be improved on is the retrofitting of a low, low/low & low/low/low level alarm for the hydraulic tank.

IF (and I don’t know) there is only a low level hydraulic alarm on the tank then the above could vastly improve the downtime window.

My thinking is that if a single low level alarm is fitted then the only time Vensys will know there is a leak is when the low level alarm triggers and they shut the turbine down. Then the issue of response time at Ripple (weekend, out of hours etc) could slow the response time down. The maintenance crew can’t expect to be on 24 hr stand by for a single turbine and maybe they have a decent transit distance before arriving on site?

Implementing the 3 level alarm means the level 1 alarm is phone call time from Vensys to Ripple. In the interim a small leak won’t affect the operation of the turbine and the leak can be remotely monitored via level 2 alarm being triggered or not. If it is triggered the turbine should be shut down until a tech gets to site. The third alarm is belts and braces but would In a perfect world be wired to drop out turbine.

In most cases a hydraulic leak will be a slow weep. Going on May generation figure of 383MWh, an average of 12.35MWh is not generated during each 24 hr window of downtime. Allowing 8 hours for stopping the turbine, carrying out the repairs & maintenance and spooling back up that is an awful lot of potential turbine downtime saved with a 3 level alarm retro fit (£3,334 at my payment rate).

I have no doubts that the hydraulic tank has a bolted access hatch that could be retrofitted with an improved alarm system at next 6 month maintenance window?

[Moxi]

Just stick an external ultrasonic level detector on the base of the tank and you will have real time monitoring of the level from full to "ahh cr&p its leaking again" and all points in between. No need to get dirty and invasive and the kit with sender would be less than 500 quid and no down time to install unless you cant go inside these beasts when they are turning which I doubt is the case ?

Moxi

[Joeboy]

Just stick an external ultrasonic level detector on the base of the tank and you will have real time monitoring of the level from full to "ahh cr&p its leaking again" and all points in between. No need to get dirty and invasive and the kit with sender would be less than 500 quid and no down time to install unless you cant go inside these beasts when they are turning which I doubt is the case ?

Moxi

Have you got a link to one Moxi? Sounds great and new to me!

[Moxi]

Theres a wide variety and this is just one I came across easily, if I were to recommend a product I would direct you to the likes of Pulsar who we use a lot in the water industry.

The unit I referred to earlier though is here:

https://fluidhandlingpro.com/fluid-proc ... eflections.

No affiliation and there are many similar offerings

Moxi

[nowty]

Cost overrun and increased borrowing for Kirk Hill ?

Ripple have announced on the community forum an email will be sent this week to Kirk Hill members.

It was in reply to some folk noticing a mismatch between the original planned £9.6m of borrowing and the recent announcement of Virgin Money of the investing [lending ] of £14m to the project. Which would imply a 13.5% cost overrun on the whole project, but I'm not too concerned (yet).

I'm more concerned about the interest rate if it was not fixed early or hedged, that could be another shock.

[Joeboy]

Here's hoping they got a rate two months ago. Ah well...

I will say that i'm not a fan of Ripple not being in front of this re communication.

They are fast enough to present wee puff pieces on themselves. How about following that through to show complete transparency and integrity too? The reality is what it is on the finances, why hold back the info from the owners?

A one liner when the loan was agreed. 'Additional finance sought and secured due to project complexity and ongoing inflation/material costs, details to follow'.

Instead, they are reacting to being found out and scrabbling to prep a sunnyside up doc.

IMHO, it looks poor.