1st Small Wind Turbine Gets AWEA Certification

November 25th, 2011 by Zachary Shahan

Small wind turbines have been booming, as we’ve reported a few times this year. But, up to now, there hasn’t been much independent evaluation of how well these small turbines perform, or how safe they are. Apparently, that’s changing.

10 kW Bergey Excel 10 Wind Turbine for Homes, Farms, and Small Businesses (Photo: Business Wire)

Bergey Windpower, “the nation’s oldest manufacturer of small wind turbines,” announced this week that its “best-selling” BWC Excel 10 wind turbine has now received full “AWEA Small Wind Turbine Performance and Safety Standard” certification — it’s the first to get this certification.

“This new standard is the most significant milestone in the history of the small wind industry because it provides, for the first time, third-party verification of real world performance and a highly technical review of a turbine’s strength and safety,” said Mike Bergey, president of Bergey Windpower and the 2011 president of the Distributed Wind Energy Association. “This is huge for consumers because it addresses the ‘hucksters and hype’ problem in the small wind marketplace. We are very proud to be the first to achieve this game-changing certification.” Agreed.

More from the news release:

The Bergey Excel 10 is a 23 ft diameter horizontal-axis turbine designed to provide the annual energy requirements for homes, farms, and small businesses. More than 2,000 Excel turbines have been installed in 46 states and more than 50 countries. It has only three moving parts, requires no annual maintenance, and was the first small wind turbine to carry a 10-year warranty. Excel owners include hundreds of homeowners and farmers, schools, museums, state and federal parks, all branches of the U.S. military, major corporations, and a number of celebrities. One very happy customer is Gus Sansone of Oak Hills, CA, “I installed my Bergey 10 kW in 2001. I haven’t paid an electric bill since the turbine was installed and it’s paid for itself. It’s the best investment I ever made.”

The AWEA standard was developed over a five year period by a committee of over 30 individuals drawn from industry, research organizations, universities, retailers, and users. The U.S. standard, which references a number of existing international (IEC) standards, has been adopted in Canada and, with some minor changes, in the United Kingdom. “For consumers the primary benefit is the establishment of a set of easy to understand and accurate ratings that allow, for the first time, direct comparisons of one wind turbine’s performance against another. The hype and exaggeration of untested, “innovative” designs have harmed the distributed wind business. Too many consumers have been disappointed. Certification will go a long ways towards fixing that,” said Jennifer Jenkins, executive director of the Distributed Wind Energy Association (www.distributedwind.org), the national trade association for small wind.

Certification of the Excel 10 turbine was granted by the Small Wind Certification Council (SWCC – www.smallwindcertification.org), an independent organization funded by several states and the U.S. Department of Energy. “SWCC was set up to ensure that the reviews and the granting of small wind turbine certifications were held to the highest standards, so that consumers could be confident in the results,” said Larry Sherwood, executive director of the SWCC. “It’s a big burden for manufacturers, but it’s something the states with rebate programs have wanted for years – a way to ensure that the public’s money goes towards effective equipment. We have 27 turbine models from 24 manufacturers in line for certification, so I think manufacturers recognize the value of certification.” California, New York, Oregon and Wisconsin, which provide substantial rebates for small wind turbines, now require partial or full certification to the AWEA standard and a number of other states plan to do the same.

“I think SWCC has done a great job with the labeling. All of the complexities of testing, performance prediction, and noise production have been boiled down to an easy to understand set of ratings. It’s like the EPA Estimated Gas Mileage for wind turbines,” noted Mr. Bergey. “How much power? How much energy? How much noise? These are the questions consumers have, but haven’t always gotten straight answers for until now.” The AWEA standard sets the rated wind speed for turbines so that they can be accurately compared and it establishes a more revealing and valuable performance rating, the AWEA Rated Annual Energy (RAE). “Our Excel 10 carries an AWEA RAE of 13,800 kWh. A potential customer can now compare that with a competing certified turbine’s RAE and know that it will produce a certain percentage more or less energy at their site. They could never do that confidently before.” Details of the Bergey Excel 10 certification and ratings are available at http://www.smallwindcertification.org/applicant-turbines/bergey-excel.

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Tags: bergey, bergey wind, bergey wind power, bergey wind turbines, micro wind turbine certification, micro wind turbines, smal wind turbines, small wind turbine certification, wind turbine certification

About the Author

Zachary Shahan spends most of his time here on CleanTechnica as the director/chief editor. Otherwise, he's probably enthusiastically fulfilling his duties as the director/editor of Solar Love, EV Obsession, Planetsave, or Bikocity. Zach is recognized globally as a solar energy, electric car, and wind energy expert. If you would like him to speak at a related conference or event, connect with him via social media. You can connect with Zach on any popular social networking site you like. Links to all of his main social media profiles are on ZacharyShahan.com.

ear muffs

This thing is incredibly noisy to the point of being frighting during a storm. It should come with a bullet proof vest ( the neighbors are not going to be happy ) I bet they would pool together and pay your electric bill rather than have this monstrosity screaming over the landscape. No decent person would put one of these within 1 mile of a neighbor. Local taxes will have to be adjusted for compensate anyone close by. Once the government had to start giving up some of its income we will see how things go. Oh, and dont plan on selling your place on a breezy day, It ain’t gonna happen. And dont even start with the “green” stuff.This is not a green issue because this is not green. When this thing is generating the grid is always well within it’s capacity to supply 100% of power needed. If you could get this thing to generate when its over 100 and no wind, then the grid could use it.
- http://zacharyshahan.com/ Zachary Shahan
  
  Sorry, but what kind of experience do you have with it? Why should we believe you? These kind of things don’t get certification and permitting without extensive critical testing and evaluation.
  
  That said, yes, for home clean energy, solar PV is probably best for the huge majority of people.
Guest

I think this is great news. I have been researching alternative energy, solar and wind, especially small wind turbines. I really thank you for this article and expressing the efficiency of this alternative energy. The more we adopt renewable sources such as the sun and wind, the more independent we can be.
- http://cleantechnica.com/ Zachary Shahan
  
  Me too
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Anon

Before we get too excited about this, would someone like to dig a bit deeper into the scandal surrounding the need for this certification? Or perhaps Mike Bergey’s involvement in the scrapping of the California rebate program? Or perhaps Mike
Bergey’s personal involvement with the organization that “certified” his turbine? There’s a world of soap opera material here and we only hear the “company line”. ‘Tis a joke, not real reporting.
- Anonymous
  
  Take a trip to the grocery store.
  
  Buy a roll of aluminum foil.
  
  Make yourself a new tin hat. The old one seems to be failing you….
- Anonymous
  
  I’m sorry, I haven’t seen anything about that, but it doesn’t look at all like the team that came up with this certification problem is sketchy. If you have some information to share, please do, but just making claims like this doesn’t do much for me.
Techno

Great news!! I am pleased to see more and more people trying to help themselves by producing their
own electricity and at the same time, reducing oil imports, hope that in the near future, we may not have to import nothing, provided we all could be allowed to implement the Pickens Plan.
- Anonymous
  
  You mean convert our transportation system to natural gas?
  
  Do that and we do cut our foreign oil purchases but we also burn through our own natural gas and end up right back where we are. Along with a lot of unnecessary CO2 in the atmosphere.
  
  Let’s just switch to electricity. We have the technology to generate electricity without fossil fuels. And to generate it cheaply. We have electric cars (EVs and PHEVs) that will work for almost all drivers and would let us cut our personal transportation oil usage by more than 80% in only one generation of vehicles.