Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
What About Wind Power?
The lack of moving parts makes solar panels a very attractive solution for cruisers - one
less item that can incur mechanical failure in a remote location, and a silent one at that.
Thanks to small but steady improvements, commercially available mono-crystalline solar
panels now approach 20% efficiency (the percentage of light energy hitting the panel that is
actually converted into electrical energy). However, it seems the majority of cruising sail-
ors still struggle to recover their on-board energy consumption exclusively from solar pan-
els. Logically, one turns to wind to supplement solar power. Wind generators are still a
common feature on many cruising sailboats and may become the sole source of green en-
ergy during cloudy days.
As with solar power, one has to be realistic about what can be expected from an on-board
wind generator. For example, in 2012, the NOAA weather station in Lime Tree Bay (St.
Croix) recorded over sixty days during which the sustained wind speed never got above ten
knots during the November to April cruising season. Even Fajardo on Puerto Rico's ex-
posed east coast had more than forty of those 'low-wind' days, when wind generators
would have struggled to produce any meaningful output. While wind generators are great
power producers when it blows, they are not a cure-all for our solar power woes. Sizing our
solar capacity under realistic assumptions remains key if we want to reliably cover our on-
board electricity needs without burning diesel.
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