check out Ebay, for starters
I just checked. Right now on Ebay you can get the new Air Breeze (400 watt) wind turbine for $100 less than the price you can find for a new Honda EU2000i generator. I installed an Air Breeze this summer, and I reliable get 60 AH per day from it, often more. Granted, here in the SF Bay Area there's a surplus of wind. It's going to take the turbine 16 hours to charge the house bank as much as the Honda will charge in 4 hours, which is about how long the Honda will take to run through its 1-gallon gas tank. But the point here is that the turbine will do this day in and day out--at least during the summer months when it tends to run all night--without needing any fuel.
The turbine will do some cool stuff that the Honda won't do, like charge your batteries during a long passage under sail, which for me is the time when the house bank has it's heaviest load thanks to radar, dual chart plotters, et cetera.
The wind turbine does not supply all my power needs when I'm on the hook. For that, I need to combine it with a 130 watt solar panel. (Either that or turn off the freezer and purchase a 10-pound block of ice every day, which isn't a bad option if I'm anchored somewhere in the fog or under the marine layer.)
Best part is that I can keep the wind turbine happy without having to store gas onboard, and that I'm not adding to my carbon footprint when it's running.
I just checked. Right now on Ebay you can get the new Air Breeze (400 watt) wind turbine for $100 less than the price you can find for a new Honda EU2000i generator. I installed an Air Breeze this summer, and I reliable get 60 AH per day from it, often more. Granted, here in the SF Bay Area there's a surplus of wind. It's going to take the turbine 16 hours to charge the house bank as much as the Honda will charge in 4 hours, which is about how long the Honda will take to run through its 1-gallon gas tank. But the point here is that the turbine will do this day in and day out--at least during the summer months when it tends to run all night--without needing any fuel.
The turbine will do some cool stuff that the Honda won't do, like charge your batteries during a long passage under sail, which for me is the time when the house bank has it's heaviest load thanks to radar, dual chart plotters, et cetera.
The wind turbine does not supply all my power needs when I'm on the hook. For that, I need to combine it with a 130 watt solar panel. (Either that or turn off the freezer and purchase a 10-pound block of ice every day, which isn't a bad option if I'm anchored somewhere in the fog or under the marine layer.)
Best part is that I can keep the wind turbine happy without having to store gas onboard, and that I'm not adding to my carbon footprint when it's running.
