- Low wind speed model.
- This model starts producing the wind energy just from 5 mph wind.
- This is the latest design with 6 blades.
- Comes with wind charge controller, instruction manual and 1-year warranty from the purchase date.
Monday, October 7, 2013
GudCraft WG400 400 Watt 12-Volt 6-Blade Wind Gener
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ReplyDeleteSo, nice little unit, pretty solidly built, not too difficult to assmeble (pay attention to which side of the blades the washers fit!).
I was unable to find the "welded steel pipe" they reccommend for installation, so ended up uisng 2 inch heavy grade conduit and made an adapter (long, painful story).
While the unit claims to be a 400W system, I suspect that's peak under ideal conditions, we have yet to see more than about 10AMPS out of this thing in 30+ MPH winds. However, what we have noticed is that she seems very light in the tail and tends to not keep her nose in the wind. I'm planning to add some mass and area to her tail and will update this review after that. In the meantime:
PROS:
Excellent price, buck a watt (if you can get all 400...)
Easy assembly
Very well built
Great instructions for adding a brake switch
CONS:
The controller was worthless, but that's possibly due to the 100A I have coming in from my solar...
ReplyDeleteEveryone has the WRONG idea about wind power. Get a turbine and make lots of juice because its windy at their place. NOT what smaller (under 10,000 watts) wind turbines are for. Let's say you have the 600watt Gudcraft Turbine. Most generators put ot 120v AC (3 wires) that hook to a rectifier/controller that converts that to 12volts for the batteries. Do the Math (VOLTS x AMPS = WATTS) - 600 watt wind generator at optimum output is about 480watts in a 15-19 mph wind (most turbines are designed to be optimum at this wind speed cause thats the average wind speed in most places, you hardly ever gonna see 600 watts even at 50mph wind). That 480 watts is at 120v AC, thats only 4 amps. Convert that to 12v DC and you are throwing 8 amps to your batteries. That's not much, when you consider if you have just ONE 100watt solar cell at 12v thats 8.3 amps per hour to your batteries. Now imagine a hybrid system (wind and solar both) with 300watts of solar cells, and that 600watt wind turbine. You...
ReplyDeleteThe wind generator actually works well. The instructions are a bit fuzzy, for example, "the straight edge of the blade should be to the right when fixed to the hub." Sure it sounds simple enough, but what if you are on the left of the hub? The blades are not straight, they are contoured, so what the hell? I just put it together like I designed it and it has worked fine. I'm guess just a common sense approach to the assembly works best.
The charge controller also clicks. I had to contact customer service to confirm this, but a note in the instructions would have been nice to quell my fears of burning the house down when my wife called me to say the controller was clicking.
All in all it is a good product. The last tip is to be sure you're able to mount the turbine high enough to make it worth your while. If you can get it 40 plus feet you should be fine.