1983 Catalina 38; Add Electrical Power

[Hudson Force]

Originally Posted by Dave22q

........................ North of Cape Canaveral I would use wind power, south of that solar. ......................
....... more sun in the south .......................

This sounds reasonable and it's certainly true that the angle of incidence for the sun is greater near the equator and solar panels work best at lower latitudes, but there's something else at play.

The southern hemisphere has the "mirror image" of this, but let's just consider the north of the equator. Near the equator there are often little winds, the doldrums. Much of the movement of air here is rising due to heat from the sun.
From these doldrums up trough the Bahamas and South Florida there are the easterly trade winds. These arise from the huge convection cell of the equatorial winds rising, cooling and then falling,- moving back to the equator, but deflected by the Coriolis effect. These are the Easterlies AKA the Trade Winds. In this wind, all through the Caribbean, wind generators excel.

Where this air cools and falls from North Florida and up toward the Carolinas are the "Horse Latitudes". Wild horses are common on the beaches here from Cumberland Island, Georgia up to the Chesapeake. These horse's ancestors made it to shore when dumped from sailing ships that attempted to lighten their load in the mild winds of the Horse Latitudes. Wind generators don't do well here.

Other bands further north known as the Westerlies and the Polar Easterlies are good for the wind generators, but there are light wind areas between these and, of course, there is great variety in these bands with the flow of low and high pressure cells.

The final outcome is that wind generators work very well from areas of the Bahamas and down through the Caribbean, but they don't perform very well north or south of these places.

I do have both a wind generator and a solar panel. Both of them contribute, but at a fresh start, I'd ditch the wind generator and have the two solar panels. Why? ...because I'm often motoring in the "Horse Latitudes"!

If I was spending more time in the Caribbean, I'd still be taking advantage of the sun, but my wind generator would be putting ot!