Archives : 2005

Flowtrack Wind Turbines


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28th JANUARY 2005

FRENCH ISLAND INSTALL

The Lodge at French Island (50 Km east of Melbourne) has a diesel/wind/solar power system. The wind turbine there, a Bergey (westwind?) was dropped and the insurance claim was decided to be used replacing it with a Flowtrack machine (read "Power On" built by Best, sent to China, reimported to Australia, and supplied by a new player "Aerogenesis" with help from us)

Kali & Davo are curently on French Island making the install work and proving the power point tracking transformer that Davo built as a first tech project in his coil winding traineeship. This had to be done becasue the power systems here are 120v, read 60 cell batteries! Currently the holdup is that the generator failed while being motored to make the unwilling turbine start. (blades too shallow pitch, dragging brake, new gearbox seals etc). While our turbine uses a very ordinary induction motor as its generator, it has been hard to get from C.J. Pearce who took a dim view of their courrier putting goods on a ferry. It is the same old discrimmination against people with no street number!

MORE STAFF

We have taken on an official trainee, Davo, as a "coil winder". He is actually a 50 YO disgruntled taxi driver and typical multiskilled local who thought he should try to move up in life after his daughter got a chem. engineering scholarship to NSW Uni and left the area. We call him Mr Logistics.

After our last work experience Uni student was such a sucess (Stefan has gone to Germany) we thought another one would be good, so we took Robyn from QLD Uni who was theoretically doing Eng 4. For an engineering student she is a great farmer..... Seriously though she can run Autocad, the program that drives James and Kali to extreme anger. As a sideline she has raised a calf, planted a garden, walked all the tracks in Nightcap Park and distressed many local men. (she is long legged and gorgeous)

DRYING MACHINE

A local industry is Lemon Myrtle - grown by the tonne in beautiful red volcanic soil. Drying the crop is an issue however, and a local engineer, has produced a highly efficient drier based on heat pump and humidity control techniques. The pre-existing software was revamped to produce nice drying profiles for product certification and all went well.

Further drying projects followed, such as the pasta factory in Tamworth which produced little kangaroo shaped vegipasta for Qantas.

RAIL TELEMETRY PROTOCOL

Our rail traffic control software used Ericson JZA 7xx series protocol to communicate with the telemetry systems which were installed on the Junee-Albury system in 1985. This sytem was slated for upgrade, and as it used an old proprietary protocol, no modern telemetry systems were able to interface directly to it. Therefore, RIC requested us to provide an interface using an industry standard protocol. This project was completed in August 2004.

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FLOWTRACK Pty Ltd
ABN 68 079 207 168
0266 891431 (a/h)
0266 890408 (b/h)
OFFICE: End of Tuntable
Falls Road, NIMBIN