Bernd,
I have no personal experience with wind generators, but in reading a bunch of other message boards, the general concensus seems to be forget the wind generator and add as much solar as you can fit and/or afford. Their thinking is that you generally try to anchor OUT of the wind, not in it. Seems to make sense. From personal experience, you might want to increase the house bank by another 1-200 AH. Hope this helps.

Bernd,

I agree with Tom. Almost regardless of your energy budget (how much you use everyday, and how much you can put back in), there are two things that will enhance any electrical system: add more storage, go solar.

Wind generators are noisy moving parts, and I agree that almost every board I contribute to has had this discussion. [url]www.sailnet.com[/url] and [url]www.cruisersforum.com[/url] would be good places to search for information.

One of my friends here had a C36 Mk II. He installed 6 six volt golf carts under the midships settee with a reserve bank under the starboard seats, and cruised, with radar going up and down the California coast.

What alternator charging system do you have? Just the OEM alternator or have you upgraded?

Somebody has to present the other view so I guess today's my day. We hedged our bet and put both solar and wind on. Perhaps it's unique to our area but we get a lot of wind and with our northern location we only make decent solar power for 8 hours maximum, far less than that in early or late season. So for 16 hours a day we have nothing but wind.

We bought an Air Breeze because they start making power at a very low wind speed, so even if we're only making a couple of amps that keeps the batteries up overnight, our only overnight draw being the fridge at 5.3 amps running 20 minutes per hour. The Air Breeze also does not have the noise problem the earlier ones had. Downside is it only makes 16 - 17 amps max, but that is a lot of power over 24 hours.

Agree with the above comments on bank size, 300 amps is marginal IMHO. And an upgraded alternator/regulator is definitely a big plus as well.

Good article on pros, cons and pricing of various wind gens in March or April Cruising Helmsman magazine.

Worth remembering that solar panels requires a good angle to get optimum power i.e around noon, while wind gens can function day and night while there is a breeze.

Cheers.

Practical Sailor did a wind gen commparison a couple of years ago too.

Ok, We just spent a winter aboard down in the Bahama's and we have 240 watts of solar and a kiss wind gen. This set up provided us with all the power we needed and when we were in anchorages I could hear other wind gens going over ours. The only nose we get off of ours is a slight hum and that is the blade pass frequency. Reason I say that we had some friends that we met and they had the same hum. When ever I noticed a boat with a kiss on it I took a drink and went over and introduced my self and had asked them a few questions about there kiss, and I got the same answer. With 240 watts of solar the wind gen keep us going through the night many of the nights we were out. Wind was not and issue for us down there as we were even tucked up into some hidey holes. The only thing I would do different is maybe go up to about 310 to 320 watts. But I would not give up the wind gen. This is just my opinion so use it how ever you wish,

Randy