what will I need to wind power my sail boat?
Tuesday, August 17th, 2010 at
2:09 am
I have a 33 feet sailboat. I will like to power it with a wind generator for all our needs, including a little fridge and an ac... its possible? How powerful should it be? Where can I learn more about it?
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Tagged with: fridge • sailboat • wind generator
Filed under: Wind Power
Money!
It is very possible to do… It just requires very deep pockets.
It is actually very easy to produce a ton of electricity on your sailboat. The problem however, is that it comes with a ton of expense. The initial cost is one hefty price tag. So… if you are not using this vessel on an almost daily long-term basis, the cost of "going independently electric" will most likely not be worth the expense.
The main problem is not the generation of electricity, but "storing" the energy for when you need it. So, the first thing you will discover is that even when you can generate a ton of electricity, it won’t matter if your batteries (and you will need 4 or 6 or more of them) can’t accept the electricity you are generating.
Two AEroGen 6 wind generators ($2,400 each) can produce 400 amp-hours of current every twenty four hours. That is enough for a small refrigeration unit, lights, computers, water-maker, and autopilot. But it won’t be enough to run your air conditioner – it will take two more to do that.
You can add solar panels (this way, your sailboat won’t look like a four engine prop seaplane) but the solar panels are not any cheaper on an amp-hour generation basis. The most important advantage with solar panels is that the "acceptance rate" means that all of the current goes into the batteries. In addition, they require no maintenance, have no moving parts, and don’t make a sound.
Personally, I hate wind generators, and between my son and I, I think we have tested the very best, but still, when there is plenty of power generating wind, there is an almost equal amount of noise, and I just don’t like that high pitch whine created by the spinning blades. While the AEroGen is much quieter then any I’ve heard, I can hear that whine from anywhere on my boat.
Wind generators are reliable, efficient, and relatively maintenance free. I really don’t know of anyone that has problems with them, except for those few that bought the cheap ones.
In my opinion, "redundancy" is the key to success with any boat’s electrical generation system. A couple of solar panels, a wind generator, and a small diesel generator for a quick battery boost makes a lot of sense to me.
What you will need to do, it look on your ac unit and determine the amount of electricity (AMPS) it requires… then determine how many hours you will need it. With this, you can determine your electrical requirements and choose your power generating source accordingly.
It is a good idea… I love my boat, I live on it full-time, it is my home, and I have all the comforts of home as well as air conditioning… but, the initial cost is certainly not cheap. So to justify the cost, you have to be using your boat an awful lot.
Happy & Safe Boating,
John
No a wind bugger will not keep the battery’s charged with the draw U have as the wind doesn’t always blow.U will need other sources. A/C will need a generator.They make a 12v A/C don’t know anything about them.
your expectations for electrical appliances on board your sailboat is too great. save the AC for when your boat is tied up to a dock and plugged into shore power. a wind generator by it’s self will not give you enough amps. suggest that you look into solar panels along with the wind generator as a solution for electricity to power and efficiently equipped boat. there are energy saving items like LED lights that will greatly reduce electric consumption.
here is a good place to start, atomsvoyages discusses the solar tracker solar panel system for sailboats
http://www.atomvoyages.com/projects/solartracker.htm
wind generators
http://www.windenergy.com/applications/sailboats.htm
http://www.kissenergy.com/
hope this helps
My friend has a Westsail 32. He powers it with a AroGen 6 wind generator and two 125watt solar panels. So what does this power? 34 inch screen, with Satellite TV, laptop computer, mac mini computer, playstation 3, xBox, 32 inch monitor connect to a power mac tower with 4 very large hard drives busing all night long (Lol), LED through out the boat, stereo system, water maker, water pumps, and other miscellaneous stuff. Of course this equipment is not all on at one time but he has had it all turn on once before just to see if he could do it.
What you need to have with the wind generator and solar panels is a large bank of batteries. Typically about 4 times the capacity of your daily consumption. The reason for this is to make your batteries last longer. Up to 7 years before you need to replace them. If you only have one bank you may need to replace them yearly. We did that and it get expensive. It’s key to have at least 3 to 4 times the capacity.
You’ll also need an inverter. It take your DC batteries and creates AC for all your electronics. Yes you can by DC appliances and some of your navigation equipment will run on DC, but you’ll find is cheaper to buy AC appliances and you’ll also have more selection. He has a inverter with the brand name "Outback" which we found one of the best. It’s pricey, but it has a built in computer that thinks about everything. It’s great for when you forget to flip some damn switch, it will take steps to protect it’s self and/or pull power from some other source. It even helps you make coffee in the morning.
Please feel free to contact me if you need more information. Wind is an awesome power source and best of all it’s completely free until the feds figure out a way to tax it. hahah
Captain Jack