Midwest Wind Storm Oct 2010

[bennelson]

Anyone else in the middle-west get hit bad by the big wind storm?
In my area, it was 35-40 mph sustained winds for a pretty good while.

I know that some people here have renewable energy systems. Any damage or other trouble with wind towers or solar panels?

I just have 3 little Harbor Freight PV panels that I have been experimenting with for a while. One is just on the ground, and the other two are wall-mounted right above it on the front of my garage.

Unfortunately, these panels don't have any good mounting points on them. They only come with "keyholes" to hook onto the crummy rack that comes with them. I had both wall-mount PV panels keyholed onto screws on the outside of the garage.

The wind ripped the one right off, and it broke, hitting the driveway.


It's real cloudy out, and I haven't tested it yet. I would guess that it still works, but would no longer be weather-proof?

Some of the siding on the front of the garage got torn off as well. I had to go pick that off the lawn today.

Two weekends ago, I got to help out on a 7KW ground-mount PV system. I was told that the way we were mounting them was good to 100 mile per hour winds.

[euromodder]

Originally Posted by bennelson

Unfortunately, these panels don't have any good mounting points on them.

That doesn't look good

Maybe you could built a frame in aluminium extrusions and fit the PV panels in the frame ?

[Frank Lee]

Yeah- trees are completely stripped of leaves and some are down, found a shingle of mine in the lawn, tarps blown off, etc. I wasn't mentally prepared for it and it ripped the screen door right outta my hand when I opened it, looks like the hinges are loose now after the tremendous bang against the siding. Not real happy about it but Oh Well.

[bennelson]

I just tested the PV panel, and was getting 19V Open Circuit, so it IS still working.

Some sort of new frame and glass for it might be the way to go.

[Angmaar]

The wind in Wisconsin has been crazy.

It's good to hear your PV panel is ok. Another sheet of plexiglass on top should make it weather "proof" again.

[Ryland]

The wind turbine and solar panels at my parents house are still perfect and working, was a little worried about my rain barrels blowing away but they were fine, at work however we lost a slab of granite while unloading it due to the wind and a sky light in one of the pole buildings at work is gone.
Dave's Brew Farm, a wind powered brewery near here posted that they had record production from their wind turbine in the last few days.

[TomO]

The winds were bad in the suburbs of the Twin Cities too, but nothing more than stripped leaves off of trees and lower MPGs for my commutes.

[Schelter]

Yep, lotsa leaves/branches off the trees now (Im in the Twin Cities too). The good news is the cold weather and frosty windshield has prompted me to buy a real ecomod-able car and park the '66 Polara 'vert for the winter. I'm assuming the newly purchased '02 Civic coupe will beat the big block dodge in the mpg department. Having FM radio is nice too.

[WisJim]

I haven't been following this forum lately, too busy in the "real" world. Our Jacobs made it through the 60 to 70+mph winds fine, put out lots of power until I shut it down. I often shut it off in really strong (over 40mph or so) winds, not because the machine can't take the wind, but because blowing branches or trash or hail can damage the blades in those kinds of winds. And I usually get the batteries fully charged in a few hours in those kinds of winds, and I don't feel too bad about missing the power by shutting it down for a few hours. The PV panels on 2 different mountings had no problems, but our old pole shed had 2 sheets of metal roofing bent up a bit on a corner of the building. A big pine tree lost some major branches, too, but it sits by itself at one corner of the property.

A properly designed and installed wind turbine should work well in wind speeds up to 60 to 80mph, depending on what they were designed for, and to survive winds of 100+mph.