We lost our beautiful spring like weather to a foot of slush, ugh. The last few days have reminded us why we really are looking forward to our trip South. Slush is worse than rain as it doesn’t run off, just piles up putting water in places that you never imagined!
Adesso in the Snow
Our Kiss installed on Adesso
Adesso came with a KISS high output wind generator with lots of spares. My research on the product indicated that it was a durable and respected name in wind generators of the past. Kiss is no longer in business but parts were available so with that in mind I rewired it when recommissioning Adesso after the trip across the US. During the summer trip around Vancouver Island an unexpected compatibility issue arose, the KISS does not have a regulator relying on a simple heat sink and diode to produce DC and assums that a battery can be overcharged to up to 10% of its capacity negating the need for stage regulation. Well that may be true BUT when you mix that with a Morningstar MPPT regulator for the solar, things are not so happy, the “smart” regulator sensing the high voltages that the Kiss would output would shut down charging and not recover until it was reset. The Mastervolt charger/inverter didn’t like it either, should I mention the Balmar regulator as well, Sigh@><!
Air Breeze on a sunny day!
The choice was to buy another regulator and larger heat sink for the KISS or look for something else if it was affordable. In the end I did not want to spend hundreds to support an older piece of technology on our boat so the KISS was sold to someone with a simpler alternative energy environment. Looking for bang for the buck and taking into account that Captain Sue wanted less sound we opted for the Air Breeze Marine and installed the carbon fibre Blue Blades made in Portugal. Wow – no more problems and very QUIET not mention the blaze of blue in the sunlight! Another project off the list.