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Old 03-12-2007
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Mike,

My boat is at Cedar Mills right now (where they make Valiant). You will have to hop a plane.

I have not heard a lot of discussions on the Sharp panels. Do your research. There are many, many vendors of panels and I am not sure they are all completely truthful on what their output is. It is easy to fool perspective buyers. An easy way to do it is take the outputs at very low temps... or put the panels in a room with beyond natural sunlight... etc, etc. In general, as with most things in life, you get what you pay for. The panels sold through west marine (sunsei) have been written up as being fairly truthful. I know cruisers who use them.

http://www.westmarine.com/webapp/wcs...allpartial/0/0

I went with Kyocera. They are on sale right now with N Arizona (as is the Outback). Here is a good site and a link to their product(s). Kyocera are very good panels.

http://store.solar-electric.com/kc-120.html

You may be able to jump up to the 160s, depending on the size you have available to you on your boat. I almost did, but the price/watt (because of the sale pric I got them) did not make up for it. If I am still short and need to make up some more power, I can add another panel or two very easily. Easy expansion now.

As far as the wind gen... I have not heard blazing good reviews on any of them, honestly. But if you look above to my cost comparisson, it is by far the cheapest method to charge your batteries... short of doing nothing. However, unless you look like a S California wind farm, you will NOT get enough out of wind to satisfy your power requirements and will need to supplement.

Don't forget on the wind you will likely be running 4 gauge wire for each one. Other than the cost and weight, that stuff is not a lot of fun to work with (better than 4/0 though!!!).

- CD
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