The Resilience Centre has recently completed an annual review and optimisation of the Resilient Energy Great Dunkilns Wind Turbine. We have completed an upgrade of the turbine operating system along with recalibration of the blade pitch control, vibration sensors and generator in line with new developments being made by the manufacturers of the Powerwind turbine.

In addition the grid fault response has been reviewed to make the turbine less susceptible to tripping due to voltage fluctuations and micro power cuts (brownouts) which can occur frequently on the UKs aging grid especially in rural areas. The wind turbine now automatically restarts following such grid fault events significantly reducing down time by 95%.

These improvements will increase power output especially across mid range wind speeds, reduce the turbine stoppage time due to turbulence and reduce the downtime caused by minor grid faults.

As a result of this work we have measured an average 11+% increase in energy output from the wind turbine across all windspeeds. There has been a 95% reduction in turbine stoppage during high windspeeds (and we certainly had some high windspeeds at the beginning of the year!).The turbine now has lower sensitivity to grid faults and quicker restart times when a grid fault does occur.

Overall the energy output in February 2014 alone increased by 20% as a direct result of the upgrade and optimisation work. With this and the higher windspeeds we experienced due to the New Year storms were taken into account the February 2014 output target was exceeded by 166%!

We would like to thank Thomas Korzniewski and his team at GMA Grp in Germany and Powerwind Ltd for their work on optimising the Great Dunkilns Wind Turbine.