Just fixed the wind generator…. It’s now whirring away making tasty little amp hours to store in the batteries.
When we installed the blades, it was a windless day, as you would hope. Don’t want to be going around putting blades on something that wants to be spinning at high speed, might need to count fingers. The problem was that we couldn’t test it.
The next day, on our trip over to Kings Pier from Bellerieve, it was blowing quite a bit, but the wind turbine wasn’t spinning much, and I assumed it was because the batteries were already full, so the regulator was braking the turbine.
On the trip down here to Parsons Bay, it still didn’t spin much. Then, sitting at anchor with the batteries down by a few percent and heaps of wind, still no tasty amperage to be seen.
Examination of the connection into the charger revealed a hairy bit of wire! It turns out there was a short between the negative turbine input and the positive solar panel input (not that the latter is in use). So I pulled it out, cleaned it up and reinstalled it and shazam! off it went!
In fact “off it went” was not my first observation… My first observation was, ” what’s that grumbling noise?” poking my head around the engine room couldn’t reveal the source, but putting a hand on the mizzen mast confirmed it was wind turbine noise, coming down the mast. It’s not too intrusive in wind at around 10 to 12 knots, but I wonder at what it’ll sound like in 20 or more.
Maybe some rubber under the mount might help?