Where did I put that Warranty?

About a week ago I discovered the hydro was not producing power at the usual convenient time of 11pm and in the usual conditions, it was raining.  I went down to see what the problem was and one of the belts had broken, and the other was burning up under the strain.  “Ah good” I though, as obvious and simple a repair as it gets.  Up and down the waterfall in the dark to replace the belts.  Start her up and…….. bugger.  Can’t get up to speed, looks like an electrical problem like a dead short and the belts melting down was only a secondary problem.  Midnight by this time in the dark and rain with leeches having their wicked way with me, is the not the best circumstances for clarity of thinking.  Time for bed.  Next morning I do electrical tests like testing for a dead short in the hundreds of meters of transmission line.  It happens some times that a branch with a fork drops on the wires dragging them together, and in the tangle of trees, it is not easy to see visually.  No short.  Still can’t get up to speed with no load so try mechanical drag as bearings give out.  I can detect movement on a bearing on the turbine shaft so replace the bearing there.  With great difficulty as the belt pulley has seized onto the shaft and the gear puller is at the limits of its capacity trying to drag it off.  A big whack with a lump hammer finally gets it moving.

New hydro shaft bearing, whoopee!.  Still no go.  Double bugger!  Now to replace the bearings in the generator.  Hours of dismantling slip rings trying not to drop the tiny nuts into the creek.  Had to re-solder some connections as they have become a bit dodgy over the years.  Result, failure.  I finally deduce that the generator is fucked.  Going from the blackened parts, I think the field coils have shorted out.  The final, irrevocable collapse of the the machine.  Triple bugger!  No amount of ingenuity or bodging is going to fix this.  This generator has been operating 24/7 for 33 years in the harshest of service conditions.  At the bottom of a waterfall in a tropical rainforest.  Cyclones have flooded it at least 10 times sweeping it off down the creek and burying it underwater in rocks and sand.  I have press-ganged guests on Xmas day to drag it out of the creek and up to the workshop for some TLC.  I have fabricated slip rings out of brass bar and discarded paneling from a bathroom upgrade, I have shimmed out worn housings with old piston rings and broken carpenter’s tapes.  I have super-glued together the stubs of carbon brushes to make them long enough and soldered on extra bits of wire to burnt out wires.  I have patched the rear covering that was rusting away with aluminium sheets (from a caravan siding), until there was nothing left to attach it too, then went up-market using a stainless-steel bucket from the hardware store.

I have to admit defeat.  I can no longer resurrect this machine.  In it’s continuous operation of 33 years, it has rotated about 26 billion times, consumed perhaps 15 million tons of water (all returned to the creek), and provided me and guests with electricity.  Probably a few million KW Hours. Do you know of any other mechanical device that has been in continuous operation since 1983?  Heck!, I haven’t been in continuous operation for that long.  I get to sleep at night.

RIP old mate

So now I have had to search for a replacement generator.  I could not find any leads or dealer in Australia.  So I went to Alibaba, the China portal.  My very specific needs for a 2 bearing, bare shaft, 3 KVA, 4 pole, 1500RPM, self-exciting, 240V AC, single phase generator were well catered for.  I then only had to pick the colour it came in (just joking).  After some negotiation, today I sent off the money by telegraphic transfer to Mindong in Fujian.  The price for this 100kg machine was unbelievably low.  I know, I know, if it’s too good to be true, it probably isn’t, but I am prepared to find out the hard way.  The cost of the generator plus the cost of shipping it to Brisbane is less than a third of the cost in dollars, not allowing for inflation, than I paid in 1983.  How does that work?  And what does it tell us about the vast change in economics when I could source this special machine from my isolated enclave in a remote tropical rainforest and order it from China?  Price paid in 1983 about A$1000 from memory.  New one landed in Brisbane, A$305 which includes $20 bank fee.  I have yet to figure out how to get the 100kg crate from a Brisbane port to Possum Valley.  I suspect it may cost more than the machine.

Dear guests need have no worry that this disaster for me will impinge on their enjoyment, pleasure and relaxation.  The show goes on!  It means the solar panels will have to do the heavy lifting and I will have to patch in a gen-set at peak demand times.  A few hours in the evening perhaps.  It is bunkered over the hill from the cottages and is only a slight hum at the homestead just 30m away.  It might be possible to hear it from Blackbean Cottage on a still night, but I doubt it can be heard at all from Maple Cottage.

The old generator was a Stamford made in the UK.  A couple of years ago I had a mind to give some customer feedback and tell them after 3 plus decades of continuous service in the harshest of conditions, the machine had proved …… satisfactory.  I had some romantic notion that this message would somehow make its way back to an aged designer or producer of the machine, not yet pensioned off, and give them a momentary glow of satisfaction.  It was not to be.  Commercial entities do not stay around that long these days.  Indeed the current turn-over or lifetime of a company in the UK is down to 14 years.  The name Stanford now led me to China where from photos of the generators, I could see the design and brand from Stanford now on license and manufactured in China.  However, I have plumped for a Mindong generator from Fujian.  Mainly because they were the only ones that relied to my e-mails.  I have paid the invoice and now await delivery.  I would be surprised if the machine turns up in less than 2 months.  And wouldn’t be surprised it it didn’t turn up at all.

For the last several years, I have been using spare power dumped from the hydro to heat the water at the homestead.  I now have no hot water.  If the lack of hydro continues into the colder months, expect an increasingly disheveled receptionist.  I do not relish cold showers.  Hot water aplenty in the cottages as they are gas fired.  Electricity supplied as normal, even if delivered from the extremely inelegant resource of fossil fuels mixed with however much solar power can be harvested.

For those of you paying a power bill, I guess that is about all of you, consider that engineers and technicians take care of all these hassles and you just get power.  Nearly all the time.  Compare this with India, or Africa where you will get power outages on a daily basis and have to adapt, like filling up the bath when the water is on.  Next time you turn on a light, think, ‘Ah yeah, there it is’.