Eoltec Scirocco

Wind is free, catching it has been the expensive part. The Scirocco wind turbine makes this more affordable! The Eoltec Scirocco wind turbine is a beautifully designed and engineered wind turbine. It has 5.6 meter diameter blades that take the maximum possible amount of energy out of the wind for its size. The Scirocco was successfully tested on Orkney island, with its 160+ km/hr (100+ mph) hurricane force winds.

The Eoltec Scirocco can truly be called the Rolls-Royce under the residential scale wind turbines. This turbine is really powerful for its size, and produces meaningful amounts of energy for a household, business, or farm, even for those not lucky enough to live in a high-wind area. Of course, if you have lots of wind this turbine will make lots of energy!  The Scirocco incorporates features normally only found on much larger turbines, such as variable pitch blades. The result is a very efficient wind generator, especially at the lower wind speeds typically found most of the time in most places, with an excellent cost/performance ratio.

If you want to know what the Scirocco is all about, read this blog page. The writer has no relation to us, we do not know him. We just happened to come across the blog. It describes nicely how a Scirocco wind turbines keep on chugging along on Orkney island, regardless of the weather.

The Scirocco stands out from the crowd in a number of ways, here is the executive summary:

• Fail-safe design, the Scirocco can operate safely without a load, most turbines cannot
• No power loss in high winds, produces 6 kW from 40 km/h (25 mph) through 215 km/h (135 mph)
• Very efficient, from low to high winds. Due to variable cord, variable pitch blades, and true MPPT inverter.
• Smaller, quieter and cheaper than a Bergey Excel, yet produces almost as much.
• Built to last! Thanks to solid European engineering.
• Very quiet! Thanks to dynamic pitch control, limiting rotational speed to 245 rpm at all times.
• No furling at any wind speed means more energy production and less noise.
• 5 year warranty.

Just the Facts...

Output Power & Energy Production

Eoltec wrote a nifty Excel spreadsheet that can give a good estimate of monthly/annual energy production when the site's average wind speed is known. It will take your wind speed distribution, tower height, site height and a few more parameters into account. Use the spreadsheet to find out how a Scirocco will work out for your particular situation. There also is a RETScreen module containing the Scirocco data. You will of course need to adjust the data in the spreadsheet for your particular location and situation. For more about the RETScreen project analysis tool please visit the Natural Resources Canada site. To get a quick idea of power and energy production please see the graphs below.

The first graph shows output power vs. wind speed. Wind speed is at hub height, output power is measured at the output of the electronics (inverter or charge controller). Production remains constant at 6 kW from 11.5 m/s (40 km/h, 25 mph) to survival wind speed.

The next graph shows estimated monthly energy production as a function of average wind speed at 10 meters (33 feet), as typically reported by meteorological stations, or your local airport. This graph assumes the turbine's hub height is 30 meters (100 feet) above ground, and a typical wind speed distribution as found on inland sites (Weibull factor of 2).

Wind Check

To find out how many kilo-Watt-hours a Scirocco can produce for you, the first step is to look up the annual average wind speed at your location. Use the North American Wind Atlas, Canadian Wind Atlas, or the Ontario Wind Atlas to get a good idea. Keep in mind that local topography can make a difference; If you can place the turbine on top of a hill the winds will be more than the atlas indicates, similarly, if you live in a valley the winds will likely be a bit less.

Once you know the average wind speed for your site, the table below will give an idea of how much a Scirocco wind turbine will produce per month, what the cost per kWh is for business/farm or home use, and what the profit or loss will be after 20 years of net metering. The average wind speed in the table is measured at 10 meters, if you have the wind speed at a different height you can still calculate electricity production by using the Eoltec spreadsheet. The numbers are based on a realistic full installation price of $48,445, using a 106' tower with grid-tied inverter, setting aside money each year for maintenance, as explained in detail in the wind basics section.

The Return-On-Investment is based on avoided cost vs. investment. For example, avoiding an electricity bill of $1,707 annually, on an investment of $31,489 (for business/farm), results in an ROI of 5.4%. That is more than one gets on the average savings account, with a guaranteed rate-of-return that is only going to go up as electricity prices increase. Not a bad investment!

As shown above, a moderately windy site with at least 5 m/s (11 mph) can make the Scirocco immediately profitable for business use at current electricity prices. Such sites can be found in many places in the US or Canada. For home use the situation is different, it would take a very windy place to break even. Keep in mind that the Return-On-Investment is very much based on the current effective electricity price of 14.3 cents per kWh (as of this writing in September 2006). When electricity prices go up, the ROI percentage will too!

Documents

• Scirocco installation and maintenance manual (pdf)
• Scirocco brochure, by Solacity Inc. (pdf)
• Scirocco brochure, English, by Eoltec (pdf)
• Scicorro brochure, French, by Eoltec (pdf)
• Scirocco warranty statement (pdf)
• Scirocco Clearance and interface requirements drawings (pdf)
• Scirocco wind and weight loads (pdf)
• Scirocco grid-tie connection diagram (pdf)
• Scirocco wind speed vs. energy production spreadsheet (xls)
• Scirocco wire-gauge calculator (xls)
• Power-One Aurora inverter brochure (pdf)
• Power-One Aurora inverter manual (pdf)
• Power-One wind interface brochure (pdf)
• Power-One wind interface manual (pdf)
• RETScreen module for the Scirocco (xls)