Wind generator v portable unit

[castaway]

It looks like a decent windgenerator plus mounting bracket and regulater will set me back £650-£700, Its only going to give me power, which I mainly need to keep my autohelm running, when the breeze is 10kt plus.

Now Im wondering if I would be better of with a little genny which could live either on the aft deck or in my large lazerat.

Im more interested in providing a large charge when I need it, rather than a small charge going in to the battery bank whilst the boat is not in use.

The bottom end price on Ebay appears to be less that £100 for a new 2stroke unit and £250+ for a 4stroke.

Any views would be welcome.

Thanks Nick

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[bruce]

don't know about the w/g, but would opt for 4 cycle gen...over the 2 cycle gen.

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[snowleopard]

the 4 stroke unit will be quieter, smoother and more economical. a honda will leave you no change out of £500 while at the other extreme i recently bought a 2-stroke for £73 (new).

for reliable battery charging i reckon a generator beats wind or solar any time and i've tried all 3.

if you are using the generator to run a step mode charger, be sure you get one with enough power- around 700w for a 30 amp charger.

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[Joe_Cole]

Have you got a charger? If not there may be an extra cost for the generator.


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[castaway]

What is a step mode charger? i have a fairly decent one with 5 or 6 leds along the front draper I think at approx £25-£30.. Does that sound like the thing i notice that some of these units have chargers built in. I would certainly prefer a 4T rather than 2T , but at less than a £100 one can afford to make a mistake!

Thks Nick

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[Joe_Cole]

The problem with a charger like that is that it will only churn out a few amps, which means that you'll need to have the generator on for, possibly, hours to get much power into the battery. It depends on the charger but it many only produce 3 or 4 amps; fine for topping up a car battery, but not a lot of good for properly charging a boat battery. It also means fuel cost, noise for hours and the smell!

The "smart" chargers churn out a lot more amps so your charging will be quicker, but they cost a lot more. Others can tell you far more about them than I can.

Some generators have a 12volt output, but I think that it is still very low.

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[Robin]

Forget ideas of charging using the built in 12v output of a small 220v genset beause it will take many many hours. You can connect the genset to your onboard shorepower as if you were plugged into the mains, then use an onboard 'smart' charger to charge the batteries but there is a but! For this to work you need a charger that will put in a reasonable charge quickly or you will have to run the (noisy) genset for hours, also using lots of fuel, I would say 30A is a reasonable target minimum. Old fashioned high output chargers (especially the ones that have a heavy transformer humming away) take more AC power than many small gensets can provide, they are very inefficient at converting AC to DC whereas modern switch mode chargers are generally 100% efficient, though there is also another 'power' factor to consider which means even a 100% efficient one needs more than you think from theory. Some large output modern chargers have a means of reducing their output to 'just' run on a reduced power source like a genset or a visitor berth with restricted amps (Sterling Pro or Victron with optional remote controllers) or are power factor corrected (like Merlin's). If you went for say a 750w (which usually will be 650w continuous rating) generator you might find this will run up to a 40A Merlin or Sterling Pro and will put a reasonable amount of welly back in the batteries in an hours running.

We used to have a genset/shorepower set up as well as solar/wind on our old W33 but the smart charger was detuned by the makers to 'just' run without throwing the generator trip, it gave about 27A from a nominal 750w Kawasaki 4 stroke. On our current boat the charger turned belly up last weekend and we are today going to fit a replacement. The dead charger was a 40A but not very smart and definitely would not run on our Kawasaki. We are replacing it with a Sterling Pro 40A with a separate controller to be able to drop the 40A to 30A or 20A or 10A if needed to run on a low power connection or genset, I expect to get at least the 30A if not the full 40A from the Kawasaki.

Wind generators are capable of doing great things as are solar panels but the former needs wind and the latter needs sun. We have both and excellent they are too and we never run our engine to just charge batteries, but then you are looking at an expensive arrangement. In replacing our shorepower charger I have chosen a setup that will work on a small genset, but I expect to need it rarely if ever unless we start to liveaboard permanently (I wish....)

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[jkim1]

There is a charger that may interest you, but unfortunately I do not know as to how to get one. I believe that the army used to have one which drove a 12 volt dynamo, ( yes that old ) it is very small about 2 feet long and 10 inches square. I have seen one at the Netley Marsh steam engine rally. It was not driven by steam it was in the old machinery exhibition and powered by a small two stroke motor. perhaps they are still made. There are also home made generators on the internet, generally using Briggs and Stratton motors. They are considerable bigger than the army one.
Have you checked out the Duogen thats both air and water powered, but expensive. Sailing today did an article on it.

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