The Wind Turbine Equipment — Windy Boy

We installed a 6kW Proven Wind turbine with a SMA rectifier with over voltage protection and an SMA Windy Boy — yes, I know its a silly name but that is what SMA call them!

Bob Coombes of Green generation (since ceased trading) installed our Proven WT6000 6kW Wind Turbine on a Proven TM900 9mSelf-Supporting Mast in January 2007. At the same time they installed the SMA Control Equipment and new batteries. Along with that a Sunny Webbox was installed to monitor the performance of the plant across the web. The control equipment was a Windy Boy WR6KA-15 inverter and a SI5048 Sunny Island inverter to charge the batteries and control the diesel generator. The Proven turbines were first developed in the 1980s by Gordon Proven to be robust, reliable and able to withstand extreme weather conditions. Proven were subsequently taken over by Kingspan. SD Wind Energy are the current supplier and manufacturer of Proven/Kingspan turbines.

The prevailing wind across the marsh is from the West and our wind turbine is situated to the west of the house with nothing to obstruct the wind from that direction for at least 2 miles.

We had many teething problems. The wood and epoxy blades deteriorated so that in 2008 we had to have them replaced with Kevlar blades which are still going strong as of December 2024. A Proven turbine rectifier and overvoltage controller was installed to protected the Windy Boy from excess voltage output from the wind turbine as might happen in very strong winds. It did not work and we had to change the windy boy a couple of times under warranty. We also had immense problems with the equipment switching on and off rapidly. Eventfully it turned out to be wrong parameters in the windy boy, we were early adopters. To get the problem diagnosed and fixed SMA sent us two engineers from Germany. However, before we could persuade them to do that we had to replace the Proven turbine rectifier and overvoltage controller with a SMA windy Boy protection box along with a massive 6kW dump resistor.

So why in 2006 did we opt for a wind turbine rather than solar. We carried out extensive research before deciding. Solar panels were expensive and the best kW for ones buck was a large (for domestic premises) wind turbine. The decision would be different today as the price of Solar Panel has tumbled. Even so we were very early adopters of domestic wind power which bought its own issues. Quite soon after installation I believe I knew more about wind turbines than the installers, and that was not just arrogance! Driving round the country one does see distinctive Proven wind turbines but they are not at all common.... Except in Shetland. We spent 10 days there in May / June 2023 and driving round the islands we saw at least 30.

When the Wind Turbine / Windy Boy reaches end of life — hopefully not for another 10 years at least — we will need to decide how to replace it. There may be an issue before then if we have a failure of the windy boy as SMA withdraw from the small wind turbine industry at the end of 2013 and production of the Windy Boy inverter has ceased.