Energy on-board l'Olonnois

Using our Marlec HRDI charger, we monitored the energy produced by our two main sources of energy on-board. This was during a 1000 hours period of sailing/anchoring in Southern Europe.
- Energy produced by our wind charger Rutland 914i: 464Ah, corresponding to an average current of 0.464A, under 12V, i.e an average power of 5.6W
- Energy produced by our three fixed polycristal 65W solar panels: 2555Ah, corresponding to an average power of 31W.

Conclusion regarding solar panels versus wind generator 
In average, our solar panels produce 5 times more power than the wind charger.
You could wonder why we haven't thrown this heavy windmill overboard yet :-) Several reasons:
1) It is in general bad to throw stuff overboard
2) Even if, in average, the wind generator produces little, it produces a lot when the wind picks up (the relationship between the wind speed and the output power is quadratic). So at night, when sailing under rough conditions, the autopilot is powered by the wind.
3) We sailed mostly downwind and had a quite sunny weather, during this period. We expect that during our crossing back from Canada to Norway, we will be sailing more close-hauled (more apparent wind), and unfortunately, with less sun.
4) Redundancy is always good. If something goes wrong with our solar panels, we know that we still have a source of energy for the basic instruments onboard.    

Conclusion regarding total production versus consumption.
In average, our renewable sources produce about 36W. It may seem small, but it actually totally covers our needs when anchoring (lights, PCs, some hours of fridge each day). What saves us here is the fact that during the night we do not need more than a couple of watts for our mooring lights.
When sailing under autopilot, 36W is sufficient only because we have some storage capacity (400Ah) that we typically use at the end of the night. Since we left from Norway, we only had to run the engine to produce electricity a couple of times, when the sky was cloudy, and the there was very little wind. So "if we had to do it again", and if we had room for it, we would add some more AGM batteries for being totally able to run on renewable sources.


Have a nice week-end everyone. As to us, we are still waiting for the wind to Cape Verde. Apparently we see the light at the end of the tunnel, and should get what we want next week. Cross fingers!