Overnight you don’t get much sunshine and our batteries drop AH without anything topping them up.
Would a wind generator be a good idea? or would it just make more sense to add more solar and catch up the next day?
So quickly lets compare a wind generator with a power equivalent solar panel.
| Wind Generator | Solar panel |
| Cost: $1500 | Cost: $500 |
| Maximum Wattage: 450 | Maximum Wattage: 400 |
| Real world Wattage: 450w @ 25kts wind 45w @ 12kts wind 0w @ 6kts wind | Real world Wattage: 75% on a sunny day : 300W 50% as an average day: 200W |
| Average hours of generation/day: 8 | Average hours of generation/day: 8 |
| Expected Daily output: 360W (based on an average of 8 hours/day above 12kts) | Expected Daily output: 1600W (based on 8 hours of average day) |
| Cost/Watt/Day: $4.16 | Cost/Watt/Day: $0.31 |
Seems a no brainer to me, especially given the desire to anchor in calm hot anchorages. But what about the shoulder seasons or winter? would the figures change dramatically? I think they would but still remain on the side of Solar, lets face it we’ve been fairly generous with Wind and it still would need to increase cost/return by 13.5 times to break even.
One Response
Expected daily output should be measured in Wh, not W. Cost should be Cost/Wh/day, not Cost/W/day. Units matter. Power v. Energy.
I agree with your conclusion. On most boats the most significant contribution of wind generators is to shade the solar. That isn’t so good.