D400 vs. Air X Plus Another Question ...

[MehmetCan]

Hello everyone;

I'm guessing that I'm not asking a new question. However, here it is; which one would you prefer for a triple wind generator application (one each hull plus one on top of the mast), D400 or Air X? D400 is quite heavy so top of the mast is not that much an option for it, however, would it be better than Air X on each hull application on a 45ft cat?

Second question is, what kind of performance should I expect from such setup on trade wind circumnavigation route?

Thank you very much in advance.

M.

[jdoe71]

If I was doing a trade wind circumnavigation I'd go heavy on solar and certainly would not consider 3 wind gens. Two maximum would be it and that would just be for redundancy since 1 for use at night would be more than enough for my needs. Your downwind performance with wind gens is going to suffer a lot, while solar will just keep on making amps. How much power are using using anyway?

[MehmetCan]

Hi Jdoe71;

Well, the third one is a new idea after reading about a cat installing one on top of the mast of a cat. It'd certainly provide more juice than the lower ones but I must admit, I'm not that crazy about putting that much weight on top of the mast either.

As you can guess, solars are given, especially on a cat. With the wind turbines, I'm going for a belt and suspenders kind of approach.

[MehmetCan]

I'm also planning to setup the whole system based on 24V's in order to avoid any complications.

[colemj]

I have a cruiser friend who has two D400's on a monohull mounted on poles on each side of the stern. He says he gets a beat frequency noise from them and that they are always fighting each other from the perspective of both voltage regulation and wind interference. He mentioned that it may have not been a good idea.

I guess mounting two on catamaran sterns may mitigate the beat frequency noise and wind interference and the regulation problem can be dealt with easily.

However, I would not want to live on, or anywhere near, a boat with three Air-X. These are as rude of a cruising boat item as open frame generators left running on deck all night. Yes, I know I will take flak from that, but I will continue to tilt at that windmill of getting owners to understand they piss everyone else off, even though they have "become accustomed to the noise" or "enjoy knowing when the wind has picked up in the middle of the night" or "that's the sound of free energy" or any other selfish explanation that they give.

Mark

[colemj]

Back to the technicals... Lot's of different charging sources only work well through bulk mode charging. Once the batteries have reached bulk voltage and the current needs to be folded back, much of the charging capacity will be superfluous - and this is the time when your charging sources will be fighting each other for supremacy.

So it is a very good idea to have a detailed energy usage analyses and to match your charging sources to it. Why struggle with 3 windgens if you only use energy to match one? Unless you plan on cruising in light wind conditions, where every amp squeezed out will count - there you are much better off with solar, and cats can mount more solar than wind.

Mark