Wind Generator

[ciswindell]

Has anyone installed a wind generator on a CP23.  If so, I would like to see some pictures of your install of the turbine mounts and the other controller type components.  I am considering building my own wind generator.  You can find all kinds of info on this by searching the internet for chispito wind generator and there are several people selling low cost generators on Ebay that are similar to the DIY generators.

[Bob23]

I thought about it but decided that my electrical needs are more than provided for by the small solar panel I have on my forward hatch. But I'm sure it's been done by someone!
Bob23

[skip1930]

Skippy did the sol~panel on the forward hatch. Definitely not enough juice. My meter readings were 18 to 20 volts at 300 milliamp in full hot sun at high noon.
The only thing this panel has done is over two summers it has charged my battery to a point where I boiled the water out of the son-of-a-gun. Yep dry!
Had to go get another 1000 amp deep draw cell.

That could happen with a whirly gig too.

skip.

[Bob23]

I've never had a problem. You gotta have a regulator for the panel, Skip. But you already know that now. My panel keeps my single battery at 100% constantly. No complaints.
I'm sure a wind generator can supply more power but can there be that much draw on a small boat like a CP23? Maybe, I suppose.
Bob23

[skip1930]

"but can there be that much draw on a small boat like a CP23? "Well depends...boat length has not much to do with it, on how many DVD's are on board. LOL. As for me I check the water level often. Just prise off the festooned plastic cap on the zero maintenance battery.

My friend has two battery's hooked together, and one inverter, he and his wife can just about get through one feature film on DVD, viewed from the Dell laptop [and that's the key] before the battery's are flat. Power management is everything.

He retired from GE medical imaging as an electrical engineer.
S/V Sankaty is the name of his sailboat. After a lighthouse out east. Mark Ritter has a pretty good site on Facebook and is our USPS [United States Sail And Power Squadron] web-master.
skip.

[Shawn]

Power management is everything. Your friend should consider one of the portable DVD player/screen combos. They will run off 12v directly (avoid the losses in an inverter) and would last a very long time on a deep cycle battery. The Sony Sony DVP-FX950 which weights under 2 pounds (including its built in battery) will play for 7.5 hours on its own battery. According to its specs it takes 6.5w about .55 amp/hours.

Off a 90 amp/hour deep cycle if you did a 30% discharge (deep cycles can go lower then that) it would run the player for 49 hours.

Shawn

[ciswindell]

My power needs are going to be pretty high.  My job allows me to work from home, so this summer I plan to work from boat.  I will need to have reliable power to my laptop with a slim chance of failure.  I keep the boat on a mooring, so no shore power.  I also like to play music from my on board stereo, run interior lights, and sail a lot a night.  I plan to have a solar panel, but would also like to have the security of two types of recharge power.  I also plan on having a huge battery bank.  The biggest reason for the generator, however, is that I like to have projects.  I would really like to know how other people have mounted wind generators on small boats like ours.  Most of the mounts that I have found on the internet are for large boats.   Any one seen wind generators on small boats like ours?

[Shawn]

If you haven't done it already convert all your lighting to LED. That will save you a bunch of power. If it is available for your laptop run it off a 12v car charger adapter. Use a 110v inverter only if a 12v charger isn't available as you loose power in the conversions from DC to AC then back to DC. Try and trim your energy budget as much as possible as it will make it easier to deal with.

For solar a 40w Kyrocera panel can be mounted on the sliding hatch. I did that on mine and it works well and it more out of the way then any other location I could think of.

Don't go too huge on a battery bank if you don't have the ability to recharge it properly as that will kill it. Another way of dealing with a large battery bank is to get one of the smaller Honda inverter/generators and use that to recharge your bank for the times when the solar won't be enough.

As far as mounting a wind generator I'd think you would have to go transom mounted and get it up high enough to clear the aft stay and to get it in clean air. Make sure you check out the average wind speed in your area to be sure it will be enough to get useful output from the generator when you are on the hook.

Shawn

[peterg]

Had a Four Winds generator on my Orion and it generally provided enough output for Technautics refrigeration and an RO water-maker.
It was wired through the factory provided regulator, so overcharging was not a problem. This unit might be a bit large physically for a 23, but it has one of the highest rated outputs under all wind conditions of the whole bunch of wind gens out there. I used a pole mount off the transom with two tubular supports.I eventually ended up adding about forty watts of regulated solar to the wind gen, and was pretty darned self-sufficient for any length cruise. There are several smaller wind gens with regulators available that would be correctly sized for a smaller vessel like the 23 ie: Aerogen etc. A battery bank of heavy duty six volters was what I used, and rarely felt power starved. I am not doing any really long cruises on my current CP27 and do not have refrigeration, so I might get by with the addition of some PV panels. A power monitoring system is almost necessary to keep track of what's going in,  what's being used, and what is left in the battery banks. I had an E-Mon system that performed well.

[doug]

You might want to ask this question over at sailfar.net. While most of the sailors who hang there believe in KISS -- they don't seem to put anything on their boats that they don't have to. However, they also have a number who have their small boats set up for long term cruising which may well include a generator. I'm gonna guess you can mount one off the stern on a SS pole, just like the large craft but I have no first hand experience.