Cover Story: The wind turbines that failed to generate - a cautionary tale for farmers

Tuesday, June 2, 2009

Was it the fault of the manufacturer or the installer?
Was the compensation offered sufficient?
Whatever the verdict, says one farmer who invested $140,000, 'we lost our shirt on it. It's been a nightmare for us'

By DON STONEMAN

Dairyman Steve Veldman has a reputation for creatively cutting energy costs. His electricity bill is an astonishingly low $500 a month to milk 75 cows on the family farm. One particular innovation, that improved milk cooler efficiency by 50 per cent, paid off this year with both a Premier's Award for Innovation and an Oxford County Federation of Agriculture award for the same.

The electrical bill on Veldman's Embro area farm would have been even lower if he could have made a 30-kilowatt wind turbine produce even close to its rated capacity. In 2008, the generator's electrical output didn't cover the $1,200 costs of annual maintenance and insurance, let alone capital costs and interest on the investment of more than $100,000.

The turbine was taken down in early March and is in the shop for repairs. Veldman doesn't plan to reinstall it on the tower.

"There are some things you just can't get past," he says.

The turbine's manufacturer is Wenvor Technologies of Guelph.Contacted by Better Farming, Randy Seager, the firm's business manager, didn't directly blame a poor location for the low output from Veldman's turbine, but he did say that a wind turbine's production "is dependent upon wind and local conditions. If the wind is not strong or not blowing, it doesn't produce."

But Veldman isn't the only farmer unhappy with the output from his Wenvor turbine.
At Chesley, Allen Edgcumbe invested $140,000 in a turbine and tower three years ago to power his farm operations and a church camp. "We've lost our shirt on it here. It's just been a nightmare for us."

He says the original turbine has been replaced twice. Now the tower is for sale.
Is location his problem? "It's on top of a hill," he says.

Like Veldman, he was expecting an output of 94,000 kW hours of electricity annually, but generated only a fraction of that amount. In strong winds, he says, the turbine turned itself sideways and switched off, only to restart again. "It takes power to start it up," he says, so the net output was minimal.

But, says Edgcumbe, "It's all water under the bridge. I've tried not to let it bother me any more."

Veldman says a lawyer told seven turbine owners to sue the installer, Green Breeze Inc., rather than the maker, to recover the cost of turbines they say don't work.

He says that Green Breeze offered the turbine owners a deal which included shares in a new and larger company, known as Oneworld Energy, based in Toronto. Veldman didn't' like the terms of the contract and decided not to take the deal.

Arthur farmer John Hollen did, but "I can't talk about it." The tail had broken off his turbine and took a blade with it. "Mine's not going back up," he says.

Green Breeze installed a number of turbines from different manufacturers, including Wenvor. Asked if Oneworld was still installing the Wenvor turbines, president Chuck Allen says: "Not a chance." Oneworld is in litigation against Wenvor because of the 30-kW turbines.

"Nothing (Wenvor) said in terms of workability of the turbines, their usefulness, the amount of energy they would produce, the reliability of the turbines, turned out to be anywhere near what they said," asserts Allen.

Problems from the beginning
Green Breeze wasn't familiar with the Wenvor turbine when installations began, Allen says. "The 30-kW turbine was priced very economically and would generate a higher rate of return for the farmers, assuming it did what they said it would do. Right from
the beginning, we had nothing but problems with them."

Allen describes the litigation as "on behalf of ourselves and the farmers." He says that farmers who joined Oneworld "are compensated" and will make the case against Wenvor stronger.

As for Veldman and others who haven't joined the suit against Wenvor, Allen says: "We have a difference of opinion on who has responsibility for this. We created a solution for most of the farmers and the landowners. It is unfortunate they have chosen a different route."

Kirkton broiler operator David Marshall also didn't take the Green Breeze/Oneworld compensation package. He says the Wenvor unit installed on his farm "fell apart" five weeks after Green Breeze installed it. A blade landed in the garden, which "really distressed my wife."

Marshall describes the compensation Green Breeze offered as "a bunch of shares in a company that may or may not ever be worth anything."

He says the documentation involved was about 60 pages long and he didn't like the conditions. Marshall says that an initial public offering of stocks was planned for last October. Oneworld's website describes its predecessor company, Green Breeze Inc., as "a regionally-based clean energy company" and calls itself "a global holding company for three operating com-panies with wind projects in Ontario, Prince Edward Island, France, Germany and Hungary."

The website says Oneworld Energy is "projecting 40 net MW of projects in 2009 ready for construction" and says Oneworld is "currently evaluating wind opportunities with more than 575 MW in wind projects and 60 MW in solar projects for its own account."

Exeter-area trucker Wayne Prance did sue Green Breeze for an installation on his property because it didn't meet his expectations. He says the case was "thrown out of court" but doesn't say why. Wenvor is maintaining his turbine, which Prance says produces little electricity.

Meanwhile, Veldman has been dealing directly with Wenvor. Repairs to the turbine were scheduled to be finished by the time a tour associated with the "Growing The Margins" conference in London went by on Mar. 13, but the tower was still down in late April.

A Wenvor representative told him that lightning had struck the generator and he should check if his farm insurance policy would cover the damages because it isn't under warranty. But Veldman says he took the insurance policy off it.

Turbine problems disturbing
Wenvor's Seagar declined a request for a list of customers who are happy with the Wenvor turbine, citing privacy reasons. He said the Wind Energy Institute of Canada on Prince Edward Island has operated a Wenvor turbine successfully since 1996.

However, Sean Whittaker, vice-president of policy for the Canadian Wind Energy Association, finds the problems involved with the Wenvor turbines disturbing. "These instances can't happen if (small scale production of electricity from wind) is going to grow," he says. He hopes a certification program for smaller scale wind turbines will overcome these concerns.

He says that he cannot comment much on the privacy issue, "but to refuse categorically to do that is unfortunate," He believes that "if you are going to make that kind of investment" a buyer needs to have some idea of whether a technology will perform.
For his part, Veldman is unforgiving. "I told them that, even if you gave the windmill to people, they wouldn't want to run it."

Veldman says his mistake was to blindly buy a locally-produced product. Likewise, Marshall says one reason for choosing the Wenvor turbine was that "all of the parts are made in Ontario and we wouldn't have trouble with warranty work." He says that he doesn't know of anyone who is happy with these turbines.

Veldman is now looking into solar power, something that doesn't have moving parts. His barn has a substantial amount of roof space facing south. He thinks that farmers who are keen to generate electricity may have it wrong. At the Growing the Margins conference in London, "no one showed up" at the conservation session, while "the generation meeting was packed."

In his view, conservation is a better bet to begin reducing energy costs on the farm. "It seems everybody and their brother wants to generate power. Nobody wants to conserve." 

At  Growing the Margins, farmers with other turbines also had complaints. Perth County poultry farmer Gary Nairn and Middlesex dairy producer Rob Krijnen both wanted to reduce substantial electrical bills on their farms and bought 80-kW turbines from Wind Energy Solutions Canada, based in Smithville in the Niagara Peninsula.

After several years, Nairn, who runs an 18,000-hen layer operation and makes his own feed, has his turbine running at about 90 per cent of where he thinks it should be. Krijnen, who pays $3,000 a month in capital and interest payments, says he faces more unforeseen expenses to keep his turbine running. He wishes he had bought quota instead.

According to a December 2007 newsletter on the WES Canada website, the company reconditions second-hand 80- and 250-kW Lagerwey turbines.

Nairn says his 80-kW turbine, which originates from Holland, cost him $130,000. The platform and hub is 130 feet in the air and the span on the turbine blades is 60 feet. "It was supposed to be refurbished," he says. By the time it was installed, Nairn figures he had invested a quarter of a million dollars in the project. "We got it up and running, but the control panel kept getting hot, catching fire – stuff like that."

Eventually wires melted in the control panel and Nairn called another company to look at it. "We found the wires in the panel were undersized.

We changed to a heavier gauge wire and that solved most of the problem."
But that took a year and a half. Nairn says the manufacturer "dragged his feet" and wanted him to spend another $50,000 on a new control panel. "I finally got their competition to come over," from Europe, Nairn relates.

He says there are still some nagging issues to be dealt with, and he hadn't expected to have to fly someone from Holland to diagnose troubles. Moreover, he didn't get compensation for failure to produce power when the turbine was off line.

Nairn says the turbine should generate $1,000 worth of electricity a month "at the going rate," he says. Without the turbine, his hydro bill is about $1,500 a month.

Rob Krijnen hoped to lower his $30,000-a-year hydro bill on a 350-cow dairy operation. He says that, after two and a half years, he still isn't covering his costs that include a substantial amount of interest on a loan to cover the purchase and installation. "It was going to pay for itself in 10 years. It will never pay for itself in 20 years," he says.

Last year, removing, refurbishing and replacing the blades cost $10,000. There was also a lightning strike.

Before that his computer control cabinet caught fire in May of 2007.

The cabinet wasn't replaced until August.

The turbine went up in August of 2006 and was connected to the grid that December.  On top of delays and downtime, Krijnen says the turbine never worked properly. A report from Composotech Structures of Goderich, where the blades were repaired, revealed stress fractures and erosion damage. One blade was eight kilograms heavier than the other. Fractures allowed it to take on water.  Krijnen wonders what the definition of refurbished is.

WES Canada director John de Leeuw told Better Farming that, after the Krijnen installation, his company noticed that there was a "very weak grid" in the area around the farm.

"The voltage is going up and down. Normally, Hydro One should deliver clean power to a customer. That is not always the case."

He says that WES Canada "supplied the customer with a new control cabinet and service. As far as I know the turbine is spinning and doing what it is supposed to do." He adds: "Some customers are never happy."  

In a subsequent email exchange, de Leeuw wrote: "I don't want to go in details about this customer. He (Krijnen) bought a used turbine and he received compensation for lost production and inconvenience, which we agreed on." He did not specify the compensation that Krijnen received.

In another email he wrote: "Buying a used turbine is buying used blades. The blades operated and worked fine.

If a customer decides to do a complete overhaul of the blades, then it is his call. You can compare this with buying a used car and having a full body repair after a year. I hope this will put everything in prospective."

De Leeuw supplied Better Farming with the names of three farmers he said were happy with his company's turbine installations. Two of those farmers confirmed that their turbines worked. The third farmer could not be reached.

WES Canada is an equipment supplier and doesn't do maintenance, says de Leeuw. He named two companies in Ontario qualified to repair WES Canada turbines. One is Free Breeze Energy Systems Ltd. in Waterloo.

The other is Feestra Electric in Welland. BF