Jeff Butler
Electric Boat Ass. Of Canada
And you asked about regen. Here's something that I wrote back in 2011:
"Regen is a funny thing. I have yet to hear any substantiated report of anyone hydro-generating more than 100W at 6 knots. That's including regular cruising sailors with towed systems. It's really a limitation of physics. If you can sail consistantly at speeds greater than about 8kts (large racing monohulls, big catamarans, etc.) then regen becomes a reasonable power source. But for boats like mine, under the best of conditions, regen might suffice to replenish house loads, or maybe not. Regen will not put any significant charge into a traction battery bank on passages of less than a week. It just that at 6kts, we're at the really flat part of the logorithmic power curve. As it is, I have seen peak regen of around 1.4A (70W) while sailing around 6kts but the 5 minute average was probably closer to .7A (35W). So any regen power that I get is just a gift, certainly nothing that I would count on. If I wanted to optimize my regen, I believe that a towed log is most effective, but that would still not generate any significant power at the limited speed of my 30' ketch."
These limitations still appear to be true, even with the dedicated, $10k, technologically advanced, Watt & Sea hydrogenerators. If they can't generate 100W at 6kts with a specialized and optimized hydrogenration system, the power collected by for your re-purposed drive system will be less.
Fair winds and following seas,
Eric
1964 Cheoy Lee Bermuda 30, 5.5kW drive, 8kWh LiFePO4 battery bank
Marina del Rey, Ca
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