Aqua4Aerogen regulator replacement?

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Frank Holden

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A brilliant bit of kit that I have had for about 20 years. In 'towed ' water mode 5 amps at 5 knots 24 hours a day. Best I have had out of it is 20 amps in wind mode.

However it comes with what is best described as a dog of a regulator and a dumb dog at that.

Adjustment of the max voltage is done by removing the unit from the bulkhead and taking to a little potted thingumee on the back with a jeweler's screwdriver. You have no idea what the new setting is until , when next you go sailing, you note the voltage when the dump resistor starts to sing ie all the input current is being diverted from the batts.

Manual here http://www.fujiyachts.net/manuals/Aqua 4 Aerogen Owners Manual.pdf

Has anyone replaced the original regulator with something smarter from Victron f'rinstance?

I must say the dump resistor makes a fine cabin heater when running hard in a cold climate.
 
Frank Holden said:
A brilliant bit of kit that I have had for about 20 years. In 'towed ' water mode 5 amps at 5 knots 24 hours a day. Best I have had out of it is 20 amps in wind mode.
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Cannot help sorry.

But we have had ours, also the Aero4aqua (or Aqua4Aero) gen for the same time. Absolutely magic, especially in towed aqua mode (though you need to be making a decently long passage as its a bit of a faff to convert from aero to aqua and back again). I wish we had bought the bigger model, the 6.

By inference, in threads on solar vs wind - much maligned by people who have never used one. They do not realise the value of a towed aqua gen - especially overnight. :)

Bought, transferred to China and then abandoned by ITT - a loss to the leisure marine industry.

Jonathan
 
Aerogens seem some of the best wind turbines ever made. They stopped production a long time ago but there are still so many around. You can expect at least 25 years out of them and then all they need is a far from expensive bearing and seal set.
Mount them on an aluminium pole rather than stainless as it absorbes running noises. I can't hear mine at all up to 22knts and then it's just a faint wind noise.
There are often 2nd hand ones for sale but the problem comes from lack of charge controller to deal with dc and needing a dump load.
The solution I found was this..
Leading Edge DL-300 Wind Turbine Charge Controller
 
Graham376 said:
Being DC but high voltage output, I suspect something like Victron Smartsolar 100/30 may work. Maybe try it with a cheap Chinese one first?
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When you cut the output from the reg won't the wind turbine run flat out? My experience of running my Duogen without the regulator is huge velocity and noise.
 
geem said:
When you cut the output from the reg won't the wind turbine run flat out? My experience of running my Duogen without the regulator is huge velocity and noise.
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Yes, hadn't thought about that :( As the voltage rises with revs, maybe add a voltage sensitive relay to divert to dump resistor when running off load, presumably the original regulator has the same internally.
 
Graham376 said:
Yes, hadn't thought about that :( As the voltage rises with revs, maybe add a voltage sensitive relay to divert to dump resistor when running off load, presumably the original regulator has the same internally.
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The Duogen uses the same dump type regulator mentioned by the OP. I spoke to Peter Anderson who owns Electric Engineering, the makers of the Duogen and the D400. It told me they looked at MPPT regs but they still believed the dump type reg was the most robust.
 
Neeves said:
Cannot help sorry.

But we have had ours, also the Aero4aqua (or Aqua4Aero) gen for the same time. Absolutely magic, especially in towed aqua mode (though you need to be making a decently long passage as its a bit of a faff to convert from aero to aqua and back again). I wish we had bought the bigger model, the 6.

By inference, in threads on solar vs wind - much maligned by people who have never used one. They do not realise the value of a towed aqua gen - especially overnight. :)

Bought, transferred to China and then abandoned by ITT - a loss to the leisure marine industry.

Jonathan
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Having read all the responses I think I will be sticking with what I have.

As I recall they were being sold by a doctor or somesuch in Sydney rather than a 'marine importer'. I assume he had bought one for himself and decided to share the joy.
Apart from the adjustment of limiting voltage thing the only other is the pain of setting it up with that widgywodgy bit of rope on the taffrail having to be set up 'just so'.
Bearings? I reckon on 10 years/10,000 miles give or take. An easy job.
Rarely bother setting up for wind these days although it paid its way in the Falklands.
 
Frank Holden said:
Having read all the responses I think I will be sticking with what I have.

As I recall they were being sold by a doctor or somesuch in Sydney rather than a 'marine importer'. I assume he had bought one for himself and decided to share the joy.
Apart from the adjustment of limiting voltage thing the only other is the pain of setting it up with that widgywodgy bit of rope on the taffrail having to be set up 'just so'.
Bearings? I reckon on 10 years/10,000 miles give or take. An easy job.
Rarely bother setting up for wind these days although it paid its way in the Falklands.
Click to expand...

We bought ours direct from LVM in the UK. When ITT took over Neosid in Australia started to import them. Neosid, as the name might suggest, were suppliers of rare earth magnets (hence their connection with LVM). Neosid as far as I know were a UK company (with an Australian operation). I think Neosid actually made the magnets. I knew of Neosid as they bought their raw materials from China (China being THE source for RE) and I spent a lot of time in China in the 80s and 90s. ITT having bought LVM transferred all the stock and production to China. The people in the UK all lost their jobs. ITT then seemed to have lost interest and the operation fell apart. I understand ITT tried to sell LVM (as it was - ie based in China) but there were no takers (maybe not surprising as ITT had destroyed the sale/marketing base) and the whole thing folded. At some point a French company sold genuine spare parts.

When you bought the water generator part it came with 2 sets of blades, large and small. We found the small blades too big at speed and made an even smaller pair of blades from stainless plate. The original blades, like the wind blades, were glass reinforced and were a bit fragile. If you lose a wind blade I suspect the only option now is to use it with 3 blades as anything else would be unbalanced.

We do not have a taffrail and I installed a ring in the transom step and bar across the transom to hold the widgly/wodgy bit of rope. I never found it difficult nor needed fine tuning...?? It just worked. Today you would probably set it up with a couple of soft shackles. :). The only excitement was retrieving the trailing rig - I used welding gloves. We are still on the original bearings. When we are not on long distance sailing it sits generating power in wind mode 365. Its basically silent. I wish solar panels were as reliable.

I could not understand how ITT made such a cock-up.

A sad story

Jonathan
 
You have to thread the rope 'just so' as shown in the instructions as otherwise the whole thing doesn't hang right and is out of balance.
I was told by everyone that 'sharks will eat the s/s log and impeller' so I had the engineers in the day job 'foreign order' department knock me up an entire new one which - as the sharks have shown no inclination to eat anything - lives in the focsle with the spare set of wind blades.

It would 'skip' a bit at speed ( which to me is 6 or 7 knots) so I bolted a shaft zinc near the front of the shaft. That seems to have worked. Thus far it has done one Transtasman, three Transpacifics, 4 ( two up/two down) between TdF and the Rio de la Plata, and two Pto Montt up to northern Chile/Ecuador. Still on the original rope which has just had the nip freshened a few times.
Should go forever as apart from the stator/rotor assembly it is just a rectifier.
 
Whilst not a Marlec product, in the past I have found their customer services and tech support something for other companies to aspire to.

A phone call may gain a rebuttal since not their product, but they helped me with very old obsolete 2nd hand kit.

No harm in asking?
 
Ours also skips (we can go a little bit faster), which is why I made the smaller blades. When it skips the rope can hockle. I did think of using an anti-torque rope - but never got round to it.

I cannot compete with your itinerary - very impressive CV :)

Like you I think it very under rated, simple but brilliant. The proponents of solar either have enormous arrays and massive battery banks - or they do not make night passages nor sail in the rain.

Jonathan
 
Long time ago - I may have bought from Neosid but seemed like I was dealing with a private individual.

Mine stopped working recently, trimmed 4 inches off the power cord from rectifier to plug to remove corroded bit which was at the rectifier end.
 
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