Quote:
Originally Posted by Valiente
Why would you not have a wind gen? To my mind, cloudy days and dark nights are at least 55-60% of the time, even in the tropics, but you can get decent wind most of the time.
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Val,
I had a Air-X on my setup. I bought all the crap to set it up. THen when I went to put it up... I realized it was going to shade the panels. At some point it was going to shade, no matter what.
I can produce enough to stay off the grid. Why add a wind?? In the lower latts, you will have some cloudy days, but in general it is bright and sunny. You WILL have the 2-4 storm in the summer, but the winter is typically quite nice and bright and the summer keeps the sun out for a long time and generally bright most of the day.
Besides, we always like to snuggle up in anchorage as close to land as we can to avoid the wind. THat makes a wind useless, considering you probably are not getting anything out of it until 12mph, IIRC. Cam has the chart for that.
Now, if you were only going to go with one thing and wanted to keep costs low, wind would make more sense. But I have 840-880 ah on my house bank, plus seperate starter bank, so I can weather the occasional fronts and cloudy days. And if it is still cloudy days later, I have a diesel generator.
But again, when you go to plan out your array and wind, look at where you will put the wind. If it shades those panels much at all, their power output drop exponentially.
Those are just my feelings. Other dissargree.
What do you think Cam?
- CD