1paulg 17 Posted April 18, 2012 Share Posted April 18, 2012 Am sure this has been covered before but couldnt find anything in search..so.. Any recommendations on best brands .. Obviously one wants a product that is going to deliver good amps ..and MINIMUM noise plus minimum vibration ...have heard of people getting rid of them afterwards because of poor choice... appreciate any comment... Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Posted April 18, 2012 Share Posted April 18, 2012 Listening avidly. I want one, my wife hates the noise. Link to post Share on other sites
Grinna 2 Posted April 18, 2012 Share Posted April 18, 2012 You both need to take a stroll down C pier at Westhaven and have a listen to our Superwind. It is very, very quiet. It's german designed and built with some nice features (easy brush changes, etc) and well engineered. The downside is, its not cheap and wind generators don't produce that much power. They're best in combination with solar panels as the two in combo will assist each other and give more power than you'd expect from simply adding the output of each. Link to post Share on other sites
John B 106 Posted April 18, 2012 Share Posted April 18, 2012 Vingalot fitted something before the RNZ, can't remember the brand but its from Whitings and is dead silent. edit . might be superwind as per Grinna Link to post Share on other sites
Fogg 427 Posted April 18, 2012 Share Posted April 18, 2012 Listening avidly. I want one, my wife hates the noise. What for? The house? Link to post Share on other sites
PaulR 3 Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 Listening avidly. I want one, my wife hates the noise. What for? The house? No, just for the TV for 2 programs / week. Link to post Share on other sites
Jon 360 Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 Listening avidly. I want one, my wife hates the noise. What for? The house? Didn't you get the memo AC he is taking your boat offshore for 10 years and he thinks it needs more charging for all the gadgets he's going to add. On a more serious note Charles showed me the unit on Vingalot and it almost changed my mine about these noisy things. It was really quite. Link to post Share on other sites
Battgirl 23 Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 The superwind is recommended by Island Cruising who put out some figures over 12 months ago showing it to be the quietest and the best performer of a few that were tested. Link to post Share on other sites
Grinna 2 Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 This is what a Superwind looks like. Whitings are the agents and they're not the cheapest wind gen you can buy, but they're certainly very quiet. Link to post Share on other sites
wheels 543 Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 Well I can say, don't buy an AirX. Untill the Superwind, which I hadn;t heard of till now, the AirX was supposed to be the best. Still slightly noisy, but we could live with that. Not as bad as some. But we never ever got the output that the specs say they should put out. And after doing a lot of research, I found that many people complained of the same thing. The unit was also supposed to have a overspeed safety brake, but it never seemed to work. We lost several sets of blades over time due to overspeed. They move frighteningly fast. You can not see them spinning. Eventually the unit failed in the electonics inside and I removed the unit. I will take a look at it one day, but decent Solar panels have certainly made a huge difference. Had 20amps going into the bank from the panels just last week. Link to post Share on other sites
1paulg 17 Posted April 19, 2012 Author Share Posted April 19, 2012 From what i understand ...the blades are very important ..and to have the unit properly dampened...otherwise you can get rumble being transmitted... Wheels..that is impressive -20 amps from the solar - what wattage capacity do you have..? Link to post Share on other sites
wheels 543 Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 2 x 195A panels. Hopefully a third next summer. Link to post Share on other sites
Bimini Babe 0 Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 I've got an Air Breeze (same as AirX I think) and very happy with it. It's not quiet, but takes hardly any time to charge up the batts. And you can now buy snazzy new 'silent blades' from these guys http://marineelectricsopua.co.nz/home.html which would deal with the noise problem if you wanted to do so. Link to post Share on other sites
broadoak 0 Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 We have had an aerogen 4 for a few years now. While it is not the highest output it is so quiet you can run it 24/7. We are very happy with it and so are all of our neighbours. Link to post Share on other sites
sailfish 0 Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 when our airx overspeeds it sounds like someone is coming through the back of the boat with a chainsaw!! gave me the fright of my life the first time. I so prefer the solar panels now. We have the same setup as wheels and have seen 25amps continous which the wind genny achieves for .1 of a second before it either freaks you out or drops back to 2amps. Even on crappy cloudy days we have had 5-8amps going in on the solar do you need another controller wheels for a 3rd panel? I think we are pushing our controller with 2 panels at 30amps. Link to post Share on other sites
wheels 543 Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 Well I am a bit miffed with the controller issue. First people I spoke to said yeah 30Amp controller will be fine. So I bought it. But I found a better deal for the panels from a local supplier and he said the the controller will be too small. But the 19A is the max I have seen from two panels and although they are capable of much more, being that there are always compromises with installation on a boat, they may never see their full potential. So I am wondering if I could get away with the three panels on the 30Amp controller. We use ruffly 200Ahrs/24hrs. In the height of summer, the two panels get the banks back to close to full charge and the genset then tops the bank up in the evening when Dawn runs it to use the Microwave. But I have been uncomfortable running the Genset up here, because I have never been in bays with so many others before. I need to work on making it even quiter. By the way, wind genny's in combination with Solar can have a small problem. Might post this seperately as it is important to understand. Link to post Share on other sites
wheels 543 Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 So...when you have two or more sources of regulated charging, you get a small problem. Lets say you have a Wind Gen and a Solar panel, both on seperate regulators. Firstly, a regulator works by sensing the Voltage level of a Battery and then throttles back the charge level going into the battery so as it does not boil the Electrolyte. Some real flash regulators get all freaky deaky with 3 step regulation which means the Voltage seen at the terminals of the battery can be higher than the battery actually is. This results in one regulator being "sensed" by another regulator as if it was the battery. So one reg will shut down thinking the battery is fully charged. Thus, lets say you have two regulators each capable of putting 10A into your bank, which means you could have the potential of 20A going in, only one regulator will work and thus you will only ever get 10A. The best you can hope for is that if you have a windy night, the Wind genny will be putting in some power. But surprisingly, windy nights are not all that common. We get that air layer on the water surface that makes the wind go over top and you have that beautiful calm night. Only really major wind continues to blow into the night. So hence why I questioned the need vs benifit of the wind gen and decided to take mine down. Remember that a Wind gen will create significant drag when you are sailing. Link to post Share on other sites
Guest Posted April 19, 2012 Share Posted April 19, 2012 A lot of mass produced, composite windgen blades can be quietened significantly by lightly fairing the leading and trailing edges with 1000 wet & dry. As mentioned before, dampening of the mounting is important to reduce noise transmission. Link to post Share on other sites
idlerboat 116 Posted April 20, 2012 Share Posted April 20, 2012 Love solar , but think that both wind and solar is a good combination. We have found that once thw wind is up to a speed to make for comfortable cruising, then the AirX puts in at least 4 amps... Any less and we tend to motor sail, so the engine is charging anyway. The Air Breeze has a lower top end out put, but starts charging at a lower speed. It has differant blades to the AirX and is a lot quieter. I have seen my AirX go over 30 amps in a strong wind, and the shutdown deffinately works. At that speed the wind noise tends to overcome the genny noise ! There are much quiter gennies such as the Rutland, that have a low wind speed startup, but much lower output. The Air X can be very noisy, but I like it !! Being a great fan of wind genies big and small (and having instaled quite a few stand alone systems ) . All things considered ? An air breeze mounted on a damper flange. (Two triangle plates with rubber mounts between) . This stops most of the vibration noise that is common with gennie mounting. Link to post Share on other sites
Kestrahl 6 Posted April 22, 2012 Share Posted April 22, 2012 We have a Rutland 914i. It has to be the quietest one in the marina and they are quite cheap. However the 80 watts of solar we have normally out does it by about 3 to 1, this said wind generators are pretty hopeless in marinas and anchorages. They are good on a passage to run the autopilot but otherwise go solar. Link to post Share on other sites
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