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Kirsti:<br><br>I have been going through the same
process, trying to engineer an electric drive in a Spray
22 sailboat that I am building. It weighs
4000#s.<br>I have found EV America (EVAmerica@...) very
helpful. For my boat it will take a 6hp 48volt motor to
propel it to hull speed and have some reserve for bad
weather. At hull speed it will draw 162 amps, or 7776
watts. With eight 6 volt batteries ( 70#s each), there
would be approximately 1 hour at hull speed. I would
think that it would be very difficult to recharge the
batteries just with the solar panels and wind generator if
you did very much motoring. It is best to recharge
batteries with a high amperage bulk charge, ( like from a
DC generator, (www.polorpowerinc.com)), and then
finish the charging with the solar panels. I am not too
familiar with the wind generator, maybe someone else would
know if it could produce enough amperage to do the
bulk charging. I am considering using a dc generator
in conjunction with the batteries. With this combo,
I could motor all day on the generator, if
necessary (going up a river or in one of the deep canyons
in Lake Powell), charge the batteries, and have a
reserve in case of an emergency ( batteries and generator
together would produce around 20 hp). But most of the time
I would run off the batteries in silence.
<br><br>These are just some of my thoughts to start you off, I
am no expert and have only started learning about
this stuff recently. I have no commercial interest in
the companies mentioned.<br><br>Bill

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Quite a project
you have there...But that is probably the first 50%
of the fun, isn't it?<br>It amazes me that there is
so little interest on the market for the production
of electric motors - is it fear of trying something
new? <br>I also found out (in my endless meanderings
on the net...) that we boaters are sort of "holy
cows" - there are no regulations or standard for how
much we can pollute the air with fumes or noise!
Imagine that. Show me a boat w. automatic bilgepump and
inboard comb.eng. that has not at one time let out a good
oily slick! <br>I contacted the Electric Launch
Company, and I'm very interested to see their reply. They
have a very pretty advertisement -. There is also a
german page: "Aquawatt". Unfortunately I don't read
german, but it might be of interest to someone.<br>I'll
be back when I get some news.<br>Cheers!

I hae recently found information on a new type of
motor, the "electric wheel". It is sold by Solomon
technologies, David Tether, 301-274-4479.<br>It is designed so
that it will regenerate the batteries by letting the
prop turn while sailing. It sounds like it could be
just the ticket for the cruising sailboat. This unit
with a solar panel should not need any outside
charging. If your electricity usage is high, you may need
to add a wind generator as well. But, it sound like
you could go without any type of fossel fuel powered
generator to keep your batteries up. Has anyone else heard
about this?

Bill: I have talked with Dave Tether about the
electric wheel, and I am impressed by what he says. The
Electric Boat Journal ran an article about it last year
based on information provided by Tether. It's certainly
worth a close look.

Ken:<br><br>Is it possible to get the old issues of the Electric Boat Journal? BTW I have sent you an application to join the EBAA, you should be getting it soon.<br><br>Bill