Ahoy Skip, I have two KISS wind generators aboard and so I read with special interest the description of your experiences with your unit.
Since you mentioned you had the unit apart to check the bearings I know you are familiar with the insides of the machine. You mentioned "special circuitry" to prevent overheating in high winds. The "special circuitry" consists of simple thermal switchs (they look like giant transistors) on two of the three phases of the alternator. These switches are connected using 1/4" quick-connects, then covered with copious amounts of shrink wrap making a heavy, unsecured lump supported only by the wires connected to them, which includes the solid copper wires of the stator windings. When the normal vibration of operation is applied to this heavy gob of matter it is inevitable that the stator wires break, which happened to me several years ago. I discovered the problem after noting low to no output to the batteries. When I checked the actual three-phase ac output of the units I discovered no output on the phases with the broken wires. My cure was to remove all the shrink tubing and the quick-connects and solder the appropriate wires directly to the quick-connect tabs on the heat switches. I put a piece of normal (the original was a very heavy wall material) shrink tubing on the thermoswitch then lashed it to the stator with fishing line. Thanks for the heads-up on the switch problem. Those switches are just about useless anyway. Even with them on the units can be spun up by strong winds. I may remove them like you did. I use a light line with a loop from the tail with the loop around the mast to secure the units. I stop the blades by turning the unit away from the wind with the line to the tail, then slip the loop up and catch a blade tip with it so the loop is around both the mast and the blade tip. This is secure in all conditions. The KISS units look good and have good output (when they are working) but they are poorly made and have several designed-in defects. I would not buy them again but I would search for better units. Norm S/V Bandersnatch Doing the Chesapeake _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list [email protected] To adjust your membership settings over the web http://liveaboardonline.com/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to [email protected] To unsubscribe send an email to [email protected] The archives are at http://www.liveaboardonline.com/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected] The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
