Thank you! Glad it was helpful! - Drake

During this past Summer season we have voyaged from Scotland to Faroe to Svalbard to Norway and are now in Rørvik, Norway pushing off to sail to Shetland, and then on to the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. With particularly bad weather making our return to Scotland more difficult, we are anticipating that we may not arrive there until late November, and that is when we will finally be able to settle back down and start editing season 5. Season 5 will tell the story of when we voyaged throughout the west coast of Greenland and we're so incredibly excited to share that with you. Cheers

Season 5 sounds like it will be great, looking forward to watching. Thanks for sharing your adventures!!

Thank you. That's wonderful to hear. Please let us know how your installation goes.

I now live on a ketch, so it will be interesting to find a place for the unit.

Sailing Carat b

I'm so sorry to hear that your D400 broke apart in the hurricane. I can't imagine those wind speeds. Did the bolts break? Would it be possible to send me a photo? I'd really like to see that! - Drake - drakeparagon@gmail.com

HA! Good eyes. Those kidney bean tins were all I had available at the time. They seem to have worked fine, though the heat generated by those dump resistors is so little that I wonder if they were even necessary.

@@drakeParagon Certainly won't hurt anything. Like you, I was thinking these things were gonna be like the elements in a toaster. Er, not so much.

Thank you! 👍

Wow, thanks, yes! I really like that idea!! I'll do it.

That is a great idea.

Thanks, The brake switch is only manually operated.

Thanks! In the USA this company sells the 12 volt version for $2455 ->www.jgordonco.com. Also a full list of dealers world wide is here eclectic-energy.co.uk/dealers/

Thanks Rob, That's a difficult question for me to answer. I think it's complicated. I could just say yes because there are lots of cruisers who live aboard year round and voyage for thousands of miles every year without any solar panels or wind generators. But I think it really depends on things like... - how much electricity you want to use every day- how often you will have access to shorepower battery charging- how much sun and wind is in the area where you are cruising for your solar panel(s) and wind generator(s) I know of cruisers who live aboard year round without any solar or wind power, but they are cruising in areas where they are able to frequently plug into shorepower. Or other cruisers who don't plug into shorepower, but run gas or diesel generators for all of their power. Or others who are happy without needing more electricity than they can get from occasionally running their engine's alternator. I also imagine being in places where there's always a lot wind, but often not a lot of sun or vice versa. So it all really depends. On our boat our electrical demands are pretty high. So I think for us it's definitely worth it for us to have both wind and solar. We love how we can get electricity from the wind generator when the solar panels aren't producing anything because it's night time or cloudy, or vice versa when it's very sunny but not windy enough... I found some articles which I thought might find interesting: Wind Generator vs Solar Panels Which is Better For Your Boat?www.emarineinc.com/Wind-Generator-vs-Solar-Panels-Which-is-Better-For-Your-Boat How Much Solar Power Do You Need? theboatgalley.com/how-much-solar-power-do-you-need/

Thanks, I'm looking forward to making another video about the D400, which will include showing how little noise it makes. In the meantime, I'll say that the D400 is incredibly quiet at any wind speed. We usually don't even notice any sound at all. You can hear it in the last part of this video starting here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ZttxpdOmvK66hJs.html

"Incredibly quiet" might be a roar to someone else. Any decibel or some readings?

Hi T Diddle, thanks. For the past 11 years we have heated our boat throughout every winter with a wood burning stove. We have also insulated 100% of the hull from the floorboards to the deck, the underside of the deck, and the inside of the cabin top with 32 mm thick Armaflex insulation. We do have a little electric space heater which we occasionally use when we are hooked up to shore power. Any excess energy created by the wind generator after the batteries are topped off would not be enough to run any kind of cabin or water heater. - Drake

Thanks, I really don't think that the amount of heat that's generated by the dump resistors could be enough to heat our enclosed cockpit. I've thought about sending the excess energy to a heating element in a hot water tank instead. But I haven't heard of anyone who has actually done it, and I'm not sure if it would be an adequate amount of energy to heat much water. In 2010 I did install an Hurricane II hydronic heater (made by International Thermal Research) for cabin heating and infinite super hot water for showers. It's one of the best things that I ever installed on Paragon. - Drake

@@drakeParagon Roughly, and assuming no heat loss, using the example at the end where the amp meter hovers at around 5A, if it did that for 1 hour at 12V that's 60 Wh or 216 kJ (kilojoule = 3.6 * Wh). Water has a specific heat of 4.19 kJ/kg°C. So correct me if I'm wrong but 216kJ / 4.19kJ/kg°C = 51°C for 1 kg of water in 1 hour at 60W. If the D400 was dumping 420W at 14/ms (28 kts) for an hour then 1 kg of water would get to 360°C or 6 kg of water would get to 60°C. If you were 60W for 24 hours, that's 1440 Wh (5184 kJ) or 1237°C for 1 kg of water or 20.6 kg of water at 60°C.

dont forget that this heat flux also has a negative component. The calculations you have appear correct at first glance, but negative heat flow through any insulation is likely to be 20-50 watts for a container with 20 litre capacity meaning that you will never actually achieve the temperatures you have calculated.

@@superwag634 Thanks, yes the insulation and tank material properties are important. Another factor I forgot to mention is the initial temperature of the water you are heating. If that's say 20°C then you only need a 30-40°C rise for warm water use to get it between 50 and 60°C.

Those are really interesting numbers. I don't know your credentials for making that claim and would love to see if others can confirm your claim. I think dumping excess power to HW would be really useful, especially in the arctic circle!

More batteries for sure.

In Svalbard during summer when the sun never goes down we always had lots of excess electricity from our solar panels. We were surprised however in Greenland, where even though there was a lot of sun, our solar panels were often not generating much because it was cloudy. - Drake

The stainless steel shaft base with the wires coming out of it (and the tower liner) stay stationary as the wind generator body rotates. So the wires don't rotate inside the pole at all. Take a look at this part of the installation video -> kzfaq.info/get/bejne/e5yorNOX09qmkWQ.html.

With particularly bad weather making our return to Scotland from Svalbard more difficult, we are anticipating that we may not arrive there until late November, and that is when we will finally be able to settle back down and start editing season 5. Season 5 will tell the story of when we voyaged throughout the west coast of Greenland and we're so incredibly excited to share that with you. Fair winds, Drake

@@drakeParagon Great. Looking forward to it. 😀

The stainless steel shaft base with the wires coming out of it (and the tower liner) stay stationary as the wind generator body rotates. So the wires don't rotate inside the pole at all. Take a look at this part of the installation video -> kzfaq.info/get/bejne/e5yorNOX09qmkWQ.html.

Hi Mike, D400 is incredibly quiet at any wind speed. You can hear it in the last part of this video starting here: kzfaq.info/get/bejne/ZttxpdOmvK66hJs.html

u hear the high pitch in the video. when u sail there is a lot of noise from everything else so u wont notice but at anchor or in a habour i dont know. but its a valid question. some vindmills are quiret some are not.

Our old Air X marine wind generator was unbelievably loud, and we had two of them. I couldn't stand the noise. But we love how incredibly quiet our D400 is, in any wind speed and in any anchorage or marina.

Thanks Dimitris, On the Westsail 42 with Perkins 4-236 diesel engine, the propeller spins when the boat is undersail with the engine off. On Eric Forsyth's Westsail 42 Fiona, he installed a custom made alternator in the bilge just above the prop shaft, with a belt going to it to generate electricity. It worked great! :) I've also seen a few different commercially available water generators. I think this one is particularly interesting because it works as both a wind and water generator -> eclectic-energy.co.uk/product/duogen-3-long/

The nice thing about wind instead of water is that wind works even when you're not going anywhere. At least, when *intentionally* not going anywhere. Solar's a nice backup when you're unintentionally not going anywhere. :D

Thanks! I just posted a sketch of the D400 installation here: kzfaq.infocommunity

Thanks.

Hi Andy, Yes those meters go up to 30 amps. They were pretty easy to install because they didn't require installing a separate shunt. Cheers! Drake Isle of Lewis Scotland

Oops, I should read further down before commenting... I see your earlier reply

Hi Andrew, Do you know anyone who has done this and how it worked for them? Thanks, Drake

DrakeParagon I read about it on one of my Facebook pages. I’ll do some searching. There is a lot of info on google for 12v/24v DC hot water elements though.

@@andrewbarron8857 ​Thanks, I'd love to hear of any examples of this being done successfully.

Absolutely. It’s still working great. I especially appreciate our D400 when we’re sailing offshore and it’s powering our autopilot, radar/chart plotter, lights and refrigeration.

In addition to our 15 solar panels we’ve got way more electricity than we use all summer long.

Since we started publishing the story in 2014, we have always maintained the same schedule. Every winter season, we work tirelessly around the clock to edit our previously taken footage into weekly episodes. And every Summer season we focus entirely on voyaging and filming. During this busy Summer season we rarely have time to edit footage into full length episodes. During this past Summer season we have voyaged from Scotland to Faroe to Svalbard to Norway and are now in Rørvik, Norway trying to find safe weather windows to sail to Shetland. From there we will sail back to the Outer Hebrides of Scotland. With particularly bad weather making our return to Scotland more difficult, we are anticipating that we may not arrive there until late November, and that is when we will finally be able to settle back down and start editing season 5. Season 5 will tell the story of when we voyaged throughout the west coast of Greenland and we're so incredibly excited to share that with you. Now we're off to prepare Paragon for what we hope is a two day weather window before the next major storm slams into us. Until next time... Fair winds, Drake Craving real time updates? Check out our Patreon page where we share all the latest news, answer questions and comments, always display our current position, and give sneak peeks of current footage! www.patreon.com/DrakeParagon Show less

Wow. What was it doing (or not doing) that got you to take it apart? Did you write to Eclectic Energy? What did they say?

The yaw bearings had gone which made it wobble. Took it to an engineering shop to see if they could take the bearings out they had to take it apart it was that rusted! Havent told eclectic energy

HA!

Hi Gabordidier, I'd be happy to try to help you out. What part wasn't clear?