Hey, we'll all know a lot more this summer, as I'm taking the thing to Bermuda, deployed! I expect to be in a position to let everyone know both how it performs and how it holds up. Not to hijack my own thread, but I'm expecting to get 45 to 50+ amps a day out of the thing (between the articulation and the MPPT controller). If I don't, then I view the concept as not being worth it, at least from a performance standpoint. Considering that I could expect 30 to 35 amps from 100 watts of fixed panels, I don't think my expectation is unreasaonble, even if unrealistic.
But as I said, with the Rutland, I'm thinking I might be able to cajole 80 to 100 amps out of the entire setup per day, which means I expect to burn about 120 amps net per day during the trip to Bermuda (trying to be conservative), which means I would need to burn fossil
fuel to charge just once or twice, depending on how fast we are. I've never sailed this particular boat to Bermuda, or for 5 or 6 days straight without stopping, so I'm guesstimating a little bit.
Now, my wife's view, because she's smarter than me, is that we should not add the windgen, because we're likely to buy another boat at some point (we've been toying with a cat for a few reasons; nothing imminent though), so she says it's not worth adding upgrades to Miracle. I guess that's a factor of how much I can get the Rutland for, but that's where we are.
Tayana 52 Ketch
Linear Mode
