A (shortened) press release from Orkney wind energy company Bryan J Rendall Electrical:
The Eoltec Scirocco, co-developed by Kirkwall company Bryan J Rendall Electrical (BJRE), is the first wind generator of its kind to meet Class 1 standards under the Microgeneration Certification Scheme. This means it is rated to withstand the extreme wind speeds experienced in exposed areas such as the north and west of Scotland. The Scirocco is now the only Class 1 turbine eligible for Feed in Tariff (FiTs) payments.
The 6 kilowatt (kW) Scirocco has been certified as generating more than 10 per cent more electricity than its nearest rival.
Mr Rendall said the certification process had been extremely challenging, and at times very frustrating.
“We have achieved a Class 1 rating on what is effectively a shoe string budget,” he said. “Other manufacturers have had multi millions of pounds in financial help and investment to carry out this testing.
“We have done it virtually all in house, with only 14,000 (pounds) of much appreciated funding from Highlands and Islands Enterprise.
The BJRE Eoltec Scirocco 6kW wind turbine has been certified as having a Reference Annual Energy Production (RAE) of 9881 kWh per annum in a mean annual windspeed of 5 metres/second. This performance is over 10% higher than its nearest rival, and over 12.5% higher than the next nearest, according to RAE ratings published on their websites.
(Note from Hugh – the Evance turbine is rated to produce 8780 kWh/year in a 5 m/s average. The Eoltec Scirocco makes 12.5% higher than this figure. Eoltec do not reveal what their energy production would be at other mean windspeeds. The “nearest rival” is most likely the Proven 11 which does not as yet have MCS certification.
The vertical axis QR5 now also has MCS certification, but the rated output is only around 2000 kWh/year at 5 m/s wind. This VAWT performs best in decent winds, but I only ever see it sited among buildings and trees where windspeed can’t be more than 3-4m/s annual average.)
Hello there,
I have been installing several Scirocco turbines (about 10 of them) and one of them is now running since 2006. As an installer of many different makes, we feel the Scirocco is actually the most efficient turbine we have installed so far but it is like a racing car, it needs permanent follow up and tuning. The two blades design induces additional vibrations and the rotor can get unbalanced quite easily so this has to be be very carefully set upon installation and checked on a very regular basis. According to me, ths Scirocco should not be sold without a strong and very professional installer support.
Eoltec has merged into Weole Energy (see http://www.weole-energy.com) who is now the only spare supplier. I understand Brian Rendall funded 100% of the MCS testings and got quite upset when Eoltec/Weole claimed that the turbine was certified and not the dealer at the end and that they could sell it to others if they wanted to. Brian then refused the MCS certification to be considered as valid and I guess this put an end to a long time partneship between Eoltec and Brian.
I discussed with Jacques Souquet a bit before the merge and he told me his next design should be a 3 bladed one. Guess why.
I would just like to say that I had a new Eoltec installed on 14/06/11 insalled by Bryan J Rendall Ltd but had bearing problems about 04/12 I contacted Pure Energy Centre Shetland and have gotten the whole problem resolved by them and the Eoltec Company to my satisfaction so much so that I have placed an order for another new Eoltec turbine which I am installing.
The output from my turbine for the first year was in acess 24000 kwh and find these turbines well engineered mine has been subjected to well over 100 mph winds in its first year as well as others near to me none having any problem with such winds
Hi Ian,
I’m glad to hear that you got your turbine sorted out so quickly. Did you get any satisfactory answer as to the root cause of the bearing failing so early in it’s life? My bearing failed within the same life span as have many others. If there was not a fault with the bearing then will the replacment bearing not fail if nothing else was changed on the machine? Does anybody know what the longest time period one of these machines has stayed up without any problems what so ever?
Latest update on the Eoltec wind turbine problems –
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-northern-ireland-18330468
Sorry I have not been checking this blog regularly. I have been far too busy chasing my tail trying to get some resolution on my issue. I have finally got a written response from Eoltec through the ECC where they make out that they are victims in my particular situation also and so thereby are absolved from any responsibility. The situation is crazy, is there anything we can do to get together as a group?
What is the current situation with Eoltec? Are they supplying parts or responding to faults? I have a 6kW Sirocco that has been down for several months with a mechanical failure. Our supplier has not had any response from Eoltec. Is anyone in a similar situation or had any luck with resolving fault issues?
Please call the Pure Energy Centre as we are now able to supply parts and respond to faults.
01957 711410
i hope you have lots of parts. a relative of mine over in northern ireland had one of these turbines and says that he has heard that most of the ones in the uk are not working and that eoltec are not doing anything about it. he also says he has heard of the same problems in lots of other countries.
Pure Energy are advertising the Eoltec 6Kw ‘new model’ so I asked what the differences were from the old model, which has been subject to so many failures. The reply was a joke but now I’ve stopped laughing I would not touch the company with a bargepole.
More awful news on these dangerous Eoltec turbines:
http://www.northern-times.co.uk/News/Controversial-wind-turbines-blade-crashes-to-ground-7506746.htm#.TwaJyH-k9VM.email
more grim news on eoltec wind turbines here… http://www.navitron.org.uk/forum/index.php/topic,15472.0.html
All I can say is thanks to all those of you who are sharing your experiences here. It’s bad news obviously and probably too late to help others to avoid the same problems with this turbine, but it’s very good to have all this out in the open so that we can all learn for the future.
A lot of the problems of the Eoltec turbine arise from the fact that it has two blades. This configuration does create certain vibrations that are inevitable when the turbine yaws to face different wind directions. Most wind turbines have three blades but two are popular in France. A two bladed turbine needs to have special attention paid to resonances .
I am one of the unlucky owners of this turbine in Northern Ireland. My turbine came down in October this year. It was the fourth turbine to come down (another one has failed since) because of the hub mounting bolts failing. The HSENI have now recommended that they all be taken down if it’s safe to do so, or if not then they should not be approached. Despite the first one in NI coming down in June Eoltec have yet to respond to a single communication save to say to one customer that they should contact BJRE. Because I’m off grid and totally dependant on the turbine I’ve had to fix it myself. (00447966960222)
Hi Patrick, I’m also ‘nursing’ one of these turbines along. Its just 11 months old. Do you know who manufactures the bearings? I want to change them before the inevitable happens.
Shetland Islands
Hello Marshall,
to the best of my knowledge you’re out of luck. As far as I know they are a specialist bearing that are only available through Eoltec. 11 months old? what’s gone wrong so soon?
The bearing has no markings on it. I believe it comes from China or Middle East somewhere. I eventually got one through Elementary Energy in Galway at a cost of over €500, to me, as Eoltec would not supply the distributer I bought the machine from or me directly. This bearing is not at all suitable for the job it is doing. I’am not going to put my machine back up and running because it is far too dangerous so I will sell it for spares or scrap if anyone is interested please contact me on 00353868713118.
Pete here are my own experimance with the Sirocco,
we put up the first Eoltec’s in The ROI in 2008 and after one year the yaw bearing gave up and she broke of the mast.
The second machine had the same problems and had here second replacement yaw bearing fitted after two and a half years.
The third turbine, all the bolts that fix the hub to the main shaft snapped and the whole hub came down.
Jacques Souquet one of the owner of Eoltec blames our tower height for the vibration (resonance frequency) but I hear from other people in the UK that they also have excessive vibration on the Eoltec 12m masts.
We also had two heating controller supplied that failed after a few weeks only to lean from the original manufacturer that they were prototypes.
To say the least Eoltec left some battle field behind and I had to close up shop.I hope all goes well for all the other owners.
Im hearing a strong rumor that Eoltec have gone burst!?
15/16 of these horrible little turbines were put up in Northern Ireland(ROI?) – and only 2/3 are going today. Seems that these people can get no parts/service from the Uk distributor Brian Rendall Company (BJRE) and the installer (some guy Dunlop – Co Antrim?) . Problems included towers snapping/breaking off at hub, blades spilting when water got inside and froze in winter – the list goes on & on….
I have one of the original Eoltec machines and I have had nothing but problems with it since the day I got it. The machine is out of action over a year now due to the 9 bolts holding the rotor assy to the generator snapping. I’am lucky that no body got hurt in the process. Eoltec will not reply to any e-mails, phone calls and I’am at my wits end with it. I would like to speak to anyone that might be in the same position to try and consolidate efforts.
You can contact me directly on the e-mail address above.
Eoin, can empathise with you. Have you had any progress resolving the issue with Eoltec since you posted? we are in a similar situation and looking on advice on how to deal with this situation.
As a footnote I’d like to point out that the Eoltec turbine is no longer listed on the web site of MCS approved turbines (September 2011). Bryan Rendall’s comment was that “Eoltec are undergoing some ownership changes that may affect the name”.
Thanks for the references, Hugh. I’ll look them over to get a handle on the finer points of the question.
Hope i hadn’t given the impression that you were affiliated with a particular manufacturer. I don’t think you had given that impression, either. Nevertheless, one can, quite legitimately, form a positive bias toward one product, or another, based on experience but that shouldn’t be mistaken for an affiliation.
For myself, a few kw-hrs a year difference wouldn’t be a big deal. What’s really important is reliability, the availability of parts, repairability in the field, maybe the potential to manufacture low-tech replacement parts, locally, and so on. Imagine the energy loss due to taking a turbine out of service…
Yes, David the industry standard is to use the Rayleigh distribution.
Of course no site has this distribution in reality but it’s close enough to be perfectly OK for a comparison of turbines. The test procedures are a good way to compare turbines. ‘Your site may vary’
If you want real world data there is some out there also at
http://www.renew-reuse-recycle.com/index.pl?section=18;n=608
An example of a test procedure is here
http://www.scoraigwind.com/powertest/index.htm
I agree that off-grid is different and that is where I live too and that is where wind turbines make the most sense, but most people live on-grid, and that is the real market and that is where the MCS stuff is sold and is the topic of the above posting.
By the way I have no affiliation to Eoltec or to any other manufacturer, I am just trying to stay up to date and help others do the same.
Hugh
Aren’t these kw-hr figures calculated, using wind speed probability distributions, rather than obtained experimentally? What would they be using for a probability distribution? Is there a standard (like the Raleigh Distribution) Regardless, I would submit that no two 5m/s “average” sites are the same anyway so these figures have to be taken with a grain of salt, in the real world.
I would also suggest that actual wind speed distributions rarely conform to the theoretical.
In a battery-charging application, those kw-hr figures would probably never matter because, once a battery set is at full charge the energy is diverted to low-priority uses, like water or space heating. In a grid-connect application…yea, you wouldn’t get paid for the missing kw-hrs. The only way one could get an idea of how two turbines compare is to put them side-by-side, at the same site but, even then, there would be slight differences.
This is not worth getting tied in a knot about.
The Eoltec turbine does indeed appear on the MCS website now, as an accredited product. Bryan Rendall is unlikely to be lying when he says that the energy production is above his competitors at the windspeed he has chosen to disclose information about.
I am sorry if the blog is misleading, and I too would be inclined to mistrust any information produced by Proven themselves but I (perhaps wrongly) assumed that Rendall would be unlikely to quote a high figure for Proven unless it was based on a good source.
I don’t know where Mick got his data from, and of course every Proven turbine and every site will likely yield a different answer, so that none of these are actually (as you put it) “facts”… they are just measurements people have made.
has it really been granted MCS?
the Evance r9000 out performs the Proven 11, this blog is quite misleading.
Quote from Mick Sagrillo ‐ “…Our advice is to ignore the kW rating….instead, look for the documentation of the turbines Annual Energy Output…” ( kW hours )
** Annual Energy Output in kW hours @ 5 m/s, 11 mph aaws **
Proven 11 = 7358 kW hours – 1226 kW hours per kW (source: Home Power Buyers Guide USA May 2010 Author – Mick Sagrillo)
Evance r9000 = 8780 kW hours – 1756 kW hours per kW (source: MCS Accreditation)
facts.