Complaint Review: ReDriven Power Inc

We became a distributor for ReDriven Power Inc back in 2008 with high expectations of the ReDriven turbines and the quality and performance that they told us and showed us on their own documentations. After selling 12 turbines between a 5kw, 10kw, 20kw turbines and getting sometimes up to 50% of the money down and sent to ReDriven so that the turbines can get ordered with a date of shipment of 2 months that we were told that we would be getting the product in. After 2 years of waiting with numerous excuses and lies of why the turbines have not arrived yet they started getting in pieces and parts to start installing our first turbine, and then the second one both 10 kws. While installing these turbines we quickly found out that the quality was poor.

The quality, safety issues, and non ul certified equipment was coming quite evident. The tower bolt holes were not lining up and had to be reemed out to fit, the hydraulic welded piece onto the base was not proper and had to do a retro fit  to the concrete foundation to make it work, had to use cutting torches to cut a hole in the tower base so we could put in the pins for the hyd. ram. Then we install the hyd. motor that raise up and down the tower. Motor did not work.Got a new one sent in from Redriven and that one was bad.They (redriven)sent in one of their tec's and he found out the motors where wired wrong and were missing parts internally.By the way all these parts come from china. Eventually we got the tower to start to go up and then it stop.ReDriven told us to take out the safety valve so it would work.We did and it worked but now if a hyd. hose blows the tower will come crashing down. The switch that they sent us to lower and rise the tower was an empty control box mounted to a length of wire, ReDriven told us to make up our own toggle switch (cobbing it up) because they dont have the switch manufactured yet.    

On the turbine head. The heads came to us without a hood and we had to take tarps and cover up the motor so it wouldnt get wet and ruined by using duct tape and straps to secure it.When the hoods came in the hinges and latch the latch was so flimlsey that we had to bend and pry it into place. They do not have the proper electronics inside the turbine head so they were cobbing a power supply inside the head with cable ties duct tape or straps. Which these power supplies are failing all the time. They are taking out the yaw break assembly (yes a safety issue) because they were melting down because it is not engineered properly.Water is getting inside the turbine head assembly even with the hoods on and freezing up creating ice which sometimes busted the fins off the motor.

Blades. Some blades came in that didnt even fit the bolt pattern for the head so we were told by ReDriven to drill out the blades to fit the bolt pattern of the flanges (Yes another safety issue) They have had many blade issues were the blades were breaking off and flying apart like at the Ohio School. ReDriven is setting there controllers to a maximum 25-30 mph wind speed even tho they advertise double that because the blades are not even tested and they are afraid themselves that the blades will blow apart. Blades are being built in china with Chris Grants (ReDriven owner and designer) Chinese employees. These blades were copied from another chinese wind turbine company.

Controller. Nothing about this controller has been engineered and tested to even run the turbines. Matter of fact the controllers for this so called short board is not even UL approved( Possiblity fire hazard) Now there working on a so called long board (PC board) and cant even get this to work. We have gotten into controllers that werent even wired properly or set up properly. These controllers are made in Canada at ReDriven's facility which is an old warehouse that they rented a bay in and put there few offices in and a little room to manufacture and engineer there controllers. There controllers is the number one problem with there whole electronic issue. They do use one of the best inverters (power one) which is made by a different company this is why they are probably one of the better engineered components of the whole system. ReDriven was not programing the inverters properly before they went to the site nor the controller was programmed properly. Sometimes we got used equipment that got sent to us because they could not financially buy anymore from the manufactures.

We have 10 kw ReDriven turbines in the field that havent even produced 300kws for the whole year! Every turbine that is in the field is not working properly and it is down more than they are up. Every time you call Redriven to get someone to talk to you and to get parts sent out it is like pulling teeth. Their main tec guy quit after about a year and now they are on their third CEO guy in the past year and a half. These turbines should have never been sold to the end users until they were completely engineered and tested, but all they wanted was the down payments from their dealers to keep their cash flow going to engineer a product that may work. Paper work that was sent to certain states that have a renewable energy program for wind isn't even the proper paperwork for this turbine that is being installed in the field(fraud).  We have 4 customers that have demanded their down payments to be refunded and Redriven is telling us that they will not refund the monies.

Beware for other dealers and customers,  DO NOT SEND ANY MONEY until you have the product in your hands and it is properly installed and working. It is hard to get monies back from a manufacturer when they don't even own anything and the owner(Chris  Grant) still lives home with mommy and daddy. Chris Grant's prior business adventure before Redriven also went belly up.

NY is not accepting any applications for Redriven's product and I hope that other states will follow soon before more fraudulent acts occur by taking money from customers when they don't even have a certified working product.