A Birds Eye View from Udny - Comissioning and Generation

Another installment from the UDNY turbine company's Matt Kaye.......

 The commissioning of the turbine was achieved on the 6th July 2011.  Several members of our Turbine Co attended along with Maja Wulf, senior engineer with Enercon, plus a coupe of commissioning engineers.  The main objective was to certify the turbine as operational and to handover the certificate and keys to the turbine.  Some of us got the opportunity to climb to the top of the turbine with the commissioning engineers whilst they made all their final checks on equipment and operational status.  Needless to say it was raining.  The attached photos were taken slightly later in the month during a revisit by Enercon. 

So now the turbine is almost fully operational - all we must wait for now is for Scottish and Southern to complete their upgrade of the power lines in this part of the grid system to allow the turbine to produce its maximum output (800kW). Currently the turbine is capped to 600kW.  Nevertheless, the turbine has to date generated 75MW in 16 days under less than average wind speed conditions. 

Needless to say, we are all excited and to some extent relieved to eventually see the turbine turning and operational and generating electricity for community benefit.   

With respect to the latter point, the Trust Co successfully held its first AGM and elections on 21st June.  We have six directors, four of whom are on the board of the turbine company and can therefore provide some continuity during the initial phase of the Trust Co activities.  The board has held its first operations meeting to set out a firm basis for operating - this process will continue over the next few months until the proper administration systems are in place to allow the Trust Company to operate and go about its core activities in proper, planned and transparent manner.  During this period, the first funds from the turbine Co are expected to be made available - this will be relatively small income at first but will gradually increase once essential operational costs have been adequately covered. 

Matt Kaye. UDNY Turbine Company Director