Wind Generator - Jaycar Electronics

Ken

good informed questions...the answers will be interesting........I have occassionaly given a wind turbine some thought

I have been totally solar for years and learnt the hard way.....under performing gear and power hungry devices etc.......bad battery choice ....under size cables.....(the local auto sparky !)......etc.........been there done it all (a very steep learning curve) very few sales persons went camping or understood the basic principles..........( still a lot of poor advice and lack of understanding out there.....and still a lot of people get bad systems and advice! )

I learnt by trial & error...making / purchasing some test gear.....and reading widely.......and then over time have what is ideal for us.........

dont take to heart of some of your previous threads responses..........at the end of the day.......all input and difference of opinions from a wide ranging source does eventually contribute something positive.........(sometimes)

Thanks Ken. Answers thus far:

1. Correct and agreed. Winds of 16-20 knots will be required which is not a huge concern for me as we camp by surf beach and there is often winds of that strength especially when there is little or no sun.

2. Jaycar sales rep advises that there is a regulator included in the unit.

3. Not to sure on this one but I think it operates at circa 14.5 charge but only when up to speed on the wind front.

As stated this is merely to compliment my solar panel and generator which can not be used all the time.

It appears as always there is conflicting advice but more 'nays' than 'yays' so I may wait a little longer to see what other reviews reveal.

Adey

Lots of replies I see. I think the answer on this one lies in someone actually using it for the same purpose as yourself and how they did it. Experimenting with this one could be costly in may ways.

My only reservation from what you have found would be the purpose and "smartness" of the regulator. Solar regulators as far as I know have some "smarts" in them to control battery charging (primarily to prevent overcooking the battery). Not sure this unit would have that smart a regulator in it.

But at the same time as a top up for the batteries it could still work - at least it would bring the batteries back up to some higher level of charge as long as it's output was higher than the battery voltage.

More questions though - is it protected from reverse current (ie when battery voltage is higher than the output of the generator) if connected directly to batteries?? Given the dynamics of charging batteries these days, if it can and does push 4Amp into your batteries (at any voltage) will this be harmful to your specific batteries??

Out of curiosity I might drop into Jaycar and see what I can find out for future reference.

Being the ultimate sceptic, I am very wary of what most "sales people" tell you these days because if they cannot read it off the box the product comes in they have no idea. I guess this is a legacy of stores selling a wide range of products some of which do need specialist knowledge.

As Bungarra said, very few people trying to sell you something have actually used the product at all let alone in the specific application you are trying to use it for.

We all learn a lot by making some "not so good" decisions at times, even after trying to research something well, but sometimes there is no other way than to try it and see, unless you really do get lucky and find someone that actually knows and / or has used the product for what you are trying to do. It makes it costly though on expensive items like this to "try it and see" if it doesn't work, although according to Consumer Affairs you do have come back if it does not do the job you are told, or it claims, it will do. For this reason most (not all) manufacturers will list some applications on the box.

The really disappointing thing to me (as Bungarra also stated) is when you get bad advice from someone that should know (like his local auto sparky). We see this all the time in our industry from both the "box movers" and "professionals that should know better". Not to say we are perfect - no one is - but we support everything we do so we need to get it right or we will forever be fixing up our own mistakes at our cost. I think that makes a big difference to the advice you get.

Thanks again Ken - I don't disagree with your thoughts. The reason I am an avid user of exploroz and frequent the advertises products is essentially because of people like you and others that take the time to respond to questions posed by people they don't know.

Cheers and have a great 2011. I am off now to the far north NSW coast for a couple of weeks in the pouring rain!!!!!

Hi all

I went and had a look at one at Jaycar and asked a lot of these questions which I have subsequently put in an email to the Store Manager who will supposedly get me the answers.

What I do no further to the previous thread is that in the manual that comes with it they show a picture of it connected to a battery as one of the uses. The guy I talked to said they tried one out at the beach (with no load though) and it "seemed to output 13.8 Volt" - but I stress this was no load.

The store guy's comment was " I prefer solar because if a regulator blows up it is not super expensive but if this wind generator dies it is basically throw away". But that is a cost based coment and not a performance or usefulness based comment

Apparently it does output all the time (not just when it gets up to efective speed) and hence the reason for needing reverse current protection which is one of the questions.

I still don't know answers to some questions and will post them if I get them.

Ken

Apparently not from advice received thus far.

i suppose it would be possible to keep the whirring of the windings down to the level of the wind noise....is maybe why they are low amps

I was standing 3 feet from the one I saw in W.A. and I could not hear any sound coming from it...I have already stated that it was silent , how silent do you want ?

Thanks Lizard. I already have solar panel but just trying to cover the bases when it isn't sunny. Also have generator but have to be mindful of other campers when I run this and also unable to run generator in NSW National Parks.

Adey...I agree with John here, as they are used by the sailing fraternity in their various forms and quite successfully as well......as I have 2 x 160 solar panels you can see that 50 watts would not do a lot for my set up BUT in saying that, I have thought about wind generators as a addition to what I already have ( or I suppose that you could just spend the money on beer instead....but whatever rocks your boat)
Sometimes I think it would be good to have a product review section on this forum that we all could refer to, ie wind generators, solar panels,winches etc etc on which we all could contribute for the benefit of others....but that idea may be fraught with trouble. :))

Thanks Simon - Hobohome very informative site and I have bookmarked it accordingly. The story on the wind turbine whilst of value does not relate to the exact item I am looking at. Thanks for responding though - really appreciated.

I would wholly agree with that, it an overpriced toy. Lots of 'feelgood' factor but no economical advantage.
I have been tinkering with wind generators for a few years, vertical axis ones and my experience is that even a 5 times bigger unit does not come close to the output of a 1m diameter horizontal axisunit in comparable winds.

Save your money for more solar panels - much better investment.

Thanks for responses. Still looking at this as an option and as reported above - this wind generator is merely to compliment my solar panel and generator when unable to use. Looks as though there are more people advising that power will not be sufficient so I may wait and see after undertaking more research.

You have to look at how much time you spend in areas with 28-36 kph winds !
Anything less than that and it wont charge your battery at all. I personally look for sheltered areas when I camp.

Ian