The purpose of this post is to enlighten anyone who is doing their due diligence regarding a wind turbine company called Enlightened Sky Energy of Joplin, MO. You may have seen them (Mike and family) at Vincent Finelli's USA Prepares Expo. I went to one a couple of months ago and of all the things I saw there, the one that interested me the most was the Enlightened Sky Energy booth. I found Mike to be a very interesting and knowledgeable man and told him how excited I was about his products. When I got home, I ordered the EP250 Wind Turbine with Grid-Tie Inverter.
My first disappointment was in how long it took to receive it. It was 2 weeks before the turbine itself came and then a couple more days before the inverter showed up. Upon opening the box, I found no assembly or mounting instructions. In the process of assembly I discovered that the provided bolts were too long which would cause them to make contact with the step down motor. Not only that, the washers were not all the same size which would cause a balance issue. I called Mike and asked him to send me the instructions and new hardware. In that conversation I also found out that I had not received all the parts. I found out I should also have received a large spring to keep the turbine from twisting up the wire. Mike told me he would ship the correct and missing parts out right away and would email me the instructions. I never received any email. I never received any package with the needed parts.
One month into this fiasco and many unreturned phone calls I finally got through to Mike. He apologized and said he would email me the instructions and ship the correct and missing parts. I did get an email but it was for a different turbine. I never received the parts. So I went to the hardware store and bought them myself. It's been two months now and my tower and wind turbine are mounted and running,...poorly. It turns out that the system is so out of balance that my tower shakes violently with winds of only 15 mph. Again I called Mike to inform him of my situation. Again, no returned phone call. Today I took it down and broke it down into the individual pieces to weigh the blades and determine what I needed to do to balance them. I found one of the blades was a full ounce heavier than the other two. By laying them on top of each other I could clearly see how poorly and inconsistently they were cut. An hour later the heavy blade was ground down more like the shape of the other two and remounted with the original bolts and newly purchased washers. The bolts are hitting the casing of the step down motor but at least my turbine is balanced properly and seems to be running OK. The bolts will eventually wear themselves down or the casing will be grooved, whichever is the weakest. It's been two months of aggravating issues and no support from Mike.
If you are interested in alternative energy, and wind turbines in particular, I would strongly advise that you go somewhere other than Enlightened Sky Energy. I have notified Vincent of USA Prepares that this vendor is not a good reflection of his vendor vetting process. I don't know what Mike's problem is, but he is NOT a man of his word. He lied to me twice. In my experience over the past two months, he does NOT provide any support for his product nor respond to phone calls requesting such. I would rate the quality of the product that I received to be a 1 out of 5. You'd be better off building it yourself.
What can I say? Talk is cheap. Purchase at your own risk. I would never do business with Mike again.
Addendum
August 3, 2012
Last night we had a thunderstorm with winds up to 60 mph. I got up to check on things and saw that two of the turbine blades had broken off. I found one of them about 100 feet from the tower. They snapped off at the mounting plate. If you have a tendency to get many storms in your area, I would think twice about getting this cheap system. The blades won't hold up to those kind of winds.
Denny J
