wind turbines and solar panels

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imakepeace

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what do you all think of fitting up a newly purchased boat with renewable energy sources? will it save money in the long term or are there ongoing maintenance/repair issues with the gear?
we are buying a 37 year old Tomahawk, well maintained, but no shore power installed. An opportunity to do without shore power and have minimal running costs or not?
 
Unless you live a very unelectrified life, I don't think panels and a windmill would keep up with consumption.

What they will do is supplement energy from the engine alternator, and keep on working when the boat is unoccupied. So, good if you're going to be parking on a mooring, but maybe a bit redundant if in a marina with shore power, where you could fit a charger and a simple two or three socket set-up for rather less money.
 
Well, not a lot of electricity, really, lighting of course, cool box, possibly a pressurised water system, charge for laptop/phones. we will fit LED as nav lights, cooker is gas, no heating.....brrrrrr
 
I had a Tomahawk for a number of years, a wonderful boat with good sailing ability and will keep going when you have given up! SWIMBO cried when we got a bigger yacht!

Many Tomahawks have travelled far and wide, I would adviseyou to join the owners association.

We were also low tech and low leccy as well, never felt the need for lots of solar panels and wind turbines. We had 110Ah domestic and a 75Ah engine start. No fridge or heating, GPS and usual instruments, nav lights and cabin lights (not LED), VHF plus radio/CD player.

Biggest concern was the Tricolour up the mast at 25W I always worried on overnight passages that we had enough juice.

Not sure where you would put a decent sized wind turbine on a Tomahawk or a large solar panel for that matter!

We just used the engine to charge the batteries and only had a problem on a couple of occasions when the domestic died. We would go away for a couple of weeks no shorepower or other means of charging the batteries with no problems. Boat lived on a swinging mooring. If I had her again I would put a solar panel on the coachroof to keep the Domestic fully charged.

I had a rutland 913 on the last yacht (Sadler 32) and that was fine but you were always aware it was there! Anything smaller would have been a waste of effort and money. On a Tomahawk it would have been much too big.

Have gone Solar on the latest boat. I would recommend a solar panel to keep the battery topped up.

Have fun
 
Have you tried a search of the forums? There have been many, many threads on this subject, one current one on Liveaboard.

You need to determine your typical daily consumption and size a panel on that. If you sail only at weekends and can manage on one full battery charge for that time then you need something fairly small, e.g. 10 watts to recharge one 100Ah battery during the week. As you will see from the Liveaboard thread some people have arrays of panels of hundreds of watts capacity and 1000Ah of batteries. It simply depends upon your requirements.
 
many thanks for your informative response, Rickym. I have joined the Tomahawk Owner's Association. may I include your answer in a blog I'm writing about the new boat, and which may be reproduced in the TOA bulletin?
 
Solar is the way. I was a big windmill fan myself, but comparative output figures, plus the noise, relative maintenance requirement, and uncertainty of wind versus sunlight, reduce their appeal.

But they need to be recognised as a long-term plan, and if you try to over-economise, you'll always be disappointed. It's worth looking hard at the figures: a photo-voltaic panel with twice the basic version's output tends to cost less than double; and so on, as the output increases. They're not pretty things to deck the yacht with, so one pricey square meter on the coachroof, kicking out 100w on a sunny day, will be much better use of the money than several relatively gutless cheaper ones, bought over time as you find the cash.

It's worth paying for the most robust version, unless you can be sure that any sort of unscratchable clear laminate you'll cover it with, does not reduce output. Clever (costlier) ones won't be too diminished in output by the shade from flapping lines/standing rigging. Whichever you fit, well worth thinking hard about how you'll prevent it being stolen.

I rather fancy stitching a row of eyelets in the mainsail about a meter above the boom, enabling perhaps 300 or 400w worth of flexible panels to be 'hoisted' on the rig's sunward side, during long beats!

I've had many optimistic and unconventional ideas about vast deep-cycle batteries on board, serving a lightly-used electric auxilliary. One of those not frightfully practical plans that would take half a century to cover its outlay, but refuelling by pure sunlight is a lovely idea, and having shore-style amperage on board (without needing long rumbling sessions of charging by diesel) will always be welcome.

However equivocally realistic my own plans, a high-output solar cell will serve your purpose I think. ;)
 
Imogen,

On a Tomahawk, I would go for solar panels.

If you are very meagre with power, you might survive on solar - drop the blog and don't come on here when you are on the boat - laptops EAT power :)

Seriously though, it will keep your batteries charged up and power a bilge pump etc when the boat is moored.
 
imakepeace said:
Would anyone mind if I reproduce this thread in my blog?
WWW.Mahaska.blogspot.com
Click to expand...

You may not realise it, but in participating on this forum you have signed every word you write here over to IPC's copyright. If you want to reproduce the thread, you'll have to ask their permission. It would be churlish of them to refuse, but you never know.
 
Good grief, is that true? Right then! That's the last time I put any style into my contributions. Now on, It'll be the bare minimum...
 
imakepeace said:
Well, not a lot of electricity, really, lighting of course, cool box, possibly a pressurised water system, charge for laptop/phones. we will fit LED as nav lights, cooker is gas, no heating.....brrrrrr
Click to expand...

In your list there are two potentially large power consumers -
- the coolbox will take several Amps when working, maybe up to 6 but probably average 2-3 during the day which is 50-75Ah
- the laptop - my little notebook says 2.5A so another 75AH if drawing that all the time -( its battery is 2.5AH, lasts realistically say 2.5 hours so even recharged say 5 times a day its 12.5AH)

So needs some substantial inputs needed to run it from solar/wind..........
 
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