I followed Hugh Piggott on a maintenance job for a Proven wind turbine in Scottish national park Glen Affric. A special adventure in Scotland’s stunning landscapes spring time. At that time, I was staying with Hugh Piggott in Scoraig, Scotland for a Visit and later I was gonna help him at his annual wind turbine construction course. He had this maintenance mission scheduled so I joined him and we had some good fun.

Driving through the valley to the wind turbine site

The location of the turbine was very remote so after leaving Scoraig by boat in the early morning and arriving on the mainland, we had to go on a 1,5 h car ride to the entrance of the Glen Affric national park in the central Highlands. From there we got picked up by a Land Rover, driven by the the head of the Scottish Youth Hostel Association. We then drove for another hour on a bumpy trail deeper into the valley. Through rivers and over narrow bridges.

On the road to Glen Affric national park

Inspecting the machine

Once arrived at the turbine, we begun with lowering the Proven tilt-up tower and and taking off the cover from the machine. We did an accurate inspection off all the possible sources for failures, such as bearings, brake, generator, and Proven’s spring loaded pitch control system that tends to wear out.

Actually, we found a nicely working system, only the brake disc was a bit loose on the shaft and made some weird noise, but that was fixed easily. Not much maintenance to do! We added some fresh grease to all the bearings, put everything back together and lifted the tower.

The wind turbine and the hostel

We later checked the other components of the electric system. The battery bank needed some topping up with distilled water and there were some old dum load heaters in the house which we removed. Everything else was fine and the Hostel was now ready for the season! after some coffee break we we headed back to Scoraig the same way. through Scotland’s amazing landscape in springtime!

Back on Scoraig after a long day…