I have an Air-X and here is what I have found:
It can generate up to 500 watts in 35knot winds (depending on screw setting normally cuts off at 400w or so) but if the
wind goes above that, it cuts off and produces NO
power. This is especially bad when there is steady 25knots of
wind and gusts much higher. I want to eventually remedy this by adding a
rudder servo to the
wind generator (powered by wind of course to turn off the wind but keep producing power)
Also, it starts spinning at 8knots, but does not produce anything useful until 10 knots. I would say it produces less than 2 amps at 10 knots though. It is hard to get an accurate measurement since the wind is changing speeds. In any case it does not
work well in light winds. Supposedly the air-breeze works in 2knots slower wind, but they refuse to publish instantaneous amperage data instead just publishing monthly power generation (which they don't explain how is calculated) Also the Air-breeze only puts out 200 watts max.. You may however consider it.
The last issue you may have is
noise, it is very noisy, but I personally do not care about it, it is a way for me to "hear" the wind better.
The nice thing is it turns off automatically with overspeed or
battery overcharge which I doubt the KISS does. The KISS one would be cooler if they used mosfets with passive syncronous rectification instead of diodes (or in parallel with them)
If I could do this over again, I would get a
rutland 913 because it is
1. sweeps smaller area (less wind load when beating or at anchor)
2. is quieter (I wonder how quiet)
3. works at lower wind speeds (down to 5knots)
4. works at higher wind speeds (up to 40knots or more)
The disadvantage to the air-x is cost, (plus you need a controller) and in the 15-30knot range, the air-x produces much more power.
I have a
weather station aboard my
boat and it is constantly logging windspeed data to my computer harddrive. Unfortunately the sensors need to be relocated to the top of the
mast to make it more accurate. Eventually I plan to publish my wind data on a website of various cruises, then make it possible to enter what the energy produced at different wind speeds to compare total power that would have been generated from any wind
generator (provided you have instantanious power production). Right now I have a lot of difficulty making comparisons (rutland works better at high and low ends, but not middle)