Retour d'experience sur les éoliennes Kissenergy

retour d'expérience US
Du forum américain SSCA (en 2006)

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I have used a KISS for the last three years. While it puts out a lot of power and is pretty quiet most of the time I cannot recommend it for two reasons. 1) It runs away if the apparent wind gets above about 25 knots which means you can't beat, even for a few minutes, in winds over about 18 knots. When it runs away you have to swing it away from the wind by hand, an action that is both difficult and dangerous. 2) It cannot tolerate more than two 360 degree turns in the same direction as it has no slip rings. Again, you have to unwind it by hand before using it again.

We recently replaced a windbugger with a KISS. Some thoughts. It is not generally too noisy under normal conditions. However, when the wind gets to 20-25 kts, it overheats and runs away. That is, its speed gets excessive until it cools off, then it returns to normal. It does have a shutoff switch, but that switch does not work when it is in overheat mode. It also like to rumble when in overheat mode, even though the blades have been carefully balanced. It has good output in the 15 to 20 kts of wind range. Under 15 kts its output is not large. SO, while we are generally happy with it, the overheat mode is troublesome, and only one other cruiser told us about this.

On the thrust bearing (or lack of it). I set ours up to be able to rotate no more than 1.5 turns, so the wire that is hard-wired to the unit will not twist very much. To date, after about 6 months of usage, it has NEVER exceeded that. We are usually at anchor, and it just points to the bow of the boat all the time. No big deal.

We have been cruising in the South Pacific where wind strengths may be a touch stronger than some other cruising grounds. It is our experience that when the KISS overheats it freewheels (runs away) at very high rpm and with considerable noise. It has never stopped running away unless we get out of the wind or stop it by hand. Having seen the damage done to a friend's boat when his Airmarine had a propellor blade come apart at speed I have not the courage to let my KISS race so I always stop it within 5 or ten minutes.

I did discuss this with the manufacturer before buying the KISS. He made it seem like a non-issue. Unfortunately, for my wife and I, it is quite a major issue. I certainly cannot speak for others and there are a lot of KISS generators out there so please talk to several people to get a consensus.

teve, I think you are right, the difference in our experiences probably lies in the cruising grounds and average sustained wind speeds. If you generally have 25+ kts of wind most of the time, the KISS will overheat often and be generally ineffective, and spend much of its time freewheeling. That is perhaps what you are facing.

I think the KISS is probably best in an environment of 15-20 kts of wind, which seems to include much of the Caribbean much of the time. At less than 10-12 kts of wind, it doesn't produce much. At more than 20 it overheats.

On ours, however, in sustained 22-25 kts of wind (the most wind we have had it in so far was a sustained 25), it overheats and then freewheels, cools down, then kicks back in. If we turn the switch to "off", then when it kicks back in, it also shuts down. It then stays shut down. If we don't shut it down, it will produce power for a bit, then overheat again, freewheel again, then cut back in, etc. There may also be an issue where one phase shuts down thermally earlier than the others, so we tend to get a rumble during the overheating process. I have emailed KISS on this question with no response. It takes a while of freewheeling for it to cool down. I haven't clocked it, but it seems to take perhaps 10-12 minutes (just a guess). My guess is that you might indeed be stopping it manually before it cools enough to kick back in.

Once shut down with the switch, winds of up to 30-35 kts (e.g. thunderstorms) don't seem able to overcome the shutdown.

We have not tried this in sustained 30-35 kts of wind, since we have not been in such conditions with the KISS yet. In thunderstorms of 35 kts of wind, lasting much less than an hour, performance of it is not much different than I described.

So, much of the good press on the KISS is probably from the US and Carib, where sustained winds are perhaps not as high as you, Steve, have faced in the Pacific and your cruising grounds.

I have heard, however, of defective thermostats in KISS units. Apparently it is not at all uncommon. Ones that shut off too early--the temp for shutdown may be off. If yours had that problem, it might indeed not ever shut down via the switch, or take too long to cool down.

In my case I have never had to manually shut down the KISS by turning it away from the wind. On my old windbugger, with NO shutoff switch, I routinely grabbed the tail and turned it away from the wind to shut it down, then tied the blades. I have not bothered yet to tie down the blades of the KISS. If we either found or were forecasted to be in sustained wind conditions over 30 kts, I would shut down and tie the blades.

So, I would guess its either differences in general wind conditions and speeds, OR a difference in the performance of the thermal cutoffs, that spell the difference in our experiences with the KISS. And there seem to be a large body of cruisers who endorse the KISS. Personally I would have preferred to have had more information about this issue before making the decision, however. It is a facet of the KISS that I was not aware of before buying.

It is VERY interesting to hear of your experiences, though, Steve, and your general dissatisfaction with the unit. Have you brought it to Doug's attention? Did he have any ideas? Have you run across others with similar experiences?

A friend (the one with the bad thermostats) showed me a drawing that purported to be the way the KISS thermal cutoffs are wired. If so, it would perhaps be possible to run another couple of wires from the unit and shut it down with a switch even after freewheeling (that is, bypassing the thermal cutoffs). I wonder if Doug has considered that?