I also succumbed and bought a Chinese wind turbine via Alibaba: 400 Watt 5 blade 1,5m
wheel diameter with glowing specifications from Wuxi Naier in Beijing only to discover it does not perform to the spec at all.
The boat is moored in
Sydney Harbour with wind on average from 8 to 20 kph with occasional gusts towards 40 kph during December.
I've measured as follows:
At 7m/s 800 milli amp
At 10m/s 1.9 amp
At 12 m/s 3.2 amp
At 15 m/s 5.3 amp
by plotting a graph it would take 25 m/s wind to get 23 Amp generated. This is approaching
hurricane level and would be unpleasant so put it mildly.
When you contact the supplier you get a young girl with a Anglisised name such as Jessica playing all sorts of games to avoid the issue. This is both annoying and unprofessional.
I have to add though that the power generated by the wind turbine is a direct function of the
wheel diameter and the wind speed while the rest is all superfelous and the 400 Watt maximum capacity is totally meaningless.
I've installed it as due to postage it's not worth returning and it does top up the
batteries consistently around half the amp mark 24/7 but turned out an expensive trickle
charger at $500.
The 200 Watt solar panels on my boat is far better and produce most of the power provided the sun shines.
The idea was to get a foot in each camp the 200 Watt Solar and 400 Watt wind and I suppose on a cold windy day a couple of amps are better than nothing!
If I could do it over I would get
Rutland 910i at $1200 and smile.
Well that my experience and I hope it is of use to someone to avoid the mistake I made.