Here's a mystery for the more electrically savvy in the group.
I have a Torqeedo Cruise 4 on my boat, and one of its drawbacks is that regen is not part of the picture. Or so I thought...
About three days ago I first noticed it. We were tacking out of a narrow inlet where we had moored overnight. The wind was coming straight in the inlet and I decided to try to sail out on the jib.
To assist I set the Torqeedo running at 300 watts to begin with, but then after a few tacks got it back down to a measley 100 watts. Thats all it needed to help her through the wind at each tack. Which is surprising really because 100 watts has her barely moving in still conditions. I think because I've set up the Torqeedo to steer parallel to the rudder it helps to have that directional thrust.
But I digress.
What I began to notice was that after each tack and she picked up a bit of speed again on the tack, doing 5 or 8 knots sporadically, the Link 10 was showing some positive amps - that is, amps going into the battery. I saw readings of 0.6 and thereabouts and even 2 amps once.
But it would last only half a minute and then flick back to a low negative value. 0.2 or 0.3 amps - which is what I would expect.
Then today we went really wild. I had full main and jib up, expecting only light wind and was sailing in an area of fairly narrow inlets with steep hills to windward, and which are known to create bullets of wind.
I had the Torqeedo running at low throttle - about 100 watts again and we got some gusts that pushed us to 12 to 15 knots. And under these conditions the Link 10 showed 18 amps going to the batteries. And this kept up for a few minutes.
(And right about then we got hit with a really strong gust which pushed us to some ridiculous speed - I guess about 25 knots but didn't have a moment to check the speed or amps because a few things blew overboard and I had to drop the main to go back to pick them up. The stuff blew backwards because of boat speed - not the beam wind...)
But back to the regen. How is it possible?
The Torqeedo is not supposed to produce regen. Its a three phase AC motor so how could it be that the controller can even deal with this current?
Any ideas?
And I'll check with the Torqeedo factory. But its looking like it would only require minor mods to get it working as a feature...
Cheers
Chris
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