400W Wind Turbine

I have several Internet repeater sites that are primarily solar powered. During the wintertime short days and stormy weather I've had to take a Honda generator to these remote locations to top off the batteries. Recently I added this wind turbine (see attached pic) and it's solved my power shortage. Typically when it's not sunny it's windy so it's worked out to be a good combination. The unit was not difficult to install, and all appears to be made out of high quality materials, like stainless steel bolts and nuts. A couple of issues. Since on sunny days my solar panel keeps my 360 amp-hours of batteries fully charged, the MPPT charge controller built-in to the wind turbine would still allow momentary voltage spikes up to 18 volts. Thinking this might not be great for the batteries, I added a second MPPT charge controller (Morningstar) after the wind turbine and that does a complete job of regulating the level of charge in the batteries not exceeding around 14 volts. If your situation is where the batteries are not typically kept fully charged then this might not be an issue for you. The second issue was how the seller handled a bearing failure 10 days into service for the new turbine. Manufacturing defects and part failures are an inevitable reality in any sort of small manufacturing business and here the seller handled the problem I think very professionally. I sent a couple of photos of the problem, and then was asked to return the unit to southern California for replacement. The same day it was received the seller shipped out a totally new replacement unit. In my mind, the seller turned this problem into an advantage. So, excellent product for my needs and nice to know that the support is there when it's needed.

Installed this on a 12' steel pole mounted to the side of a standalone garage in the desert in northern New Mexico. It's about 8' above the garage roof, and about 75' from any other structure, no trees in the area. Assembly was simple enough. The nose cone isn't secured in any real way, it's just a plastic lip holding it onto the body, so I expect that'll be the first part to go. While mounting it higher would've been recommended it's already high enough to catch wind that you cant really feel at ground level. We get some fairly extreme wind here, I've seen it flip a small camper/trailer on its side, so I was hoping for a higher output during storms. During good hard wind I've seen the included amp meter/break controller say 7 amps, 5 is much more common though so expect closer to 50-80 watts out of this thing. I'm considering it more of an overnight battery voltage maintainer than a true power source. Cool to have a little juice at night/when the sun is hidden, but the real charge comes from solar, and if I had put the money for this unit into more solar I could've easily gotten 5 times the output. Overall it's about what I expected, nothing really all that great, but not worthless.

WINDMILL (DB-400) 400W 12V Wind Turbine Generator kit residential, agriculture & marine. Built in MPPT charge controller + automatic and manual breaking system & volt meter. DIY installation providing off-grid green energy power. This was my first attempt at getting power from the wind. The kit is user friendly in size and packaging, a hobby-type generator. Beautiful functional design that simply works. The biggest challenge is location and creating a sturdy tower 20 to 30 feet high. We used our planter boxes and rigged it like a sailboat, see picture . So far so good and soon with some wind it might actually generate power and augment my solar array. Would recommend for someone who would like to experiment with green power. Yes I'd buy it again.

Was easy to assemble, used this turbine with the hybrid Pikasola solar & wind charge controller, the the braking system works well. It’s generating plenty of power, I am right on the lake getting lots of winds out of the north / north west. I used a 6’ 2” steel schedule 40 pipe for the sleeve, slid a 1.5” schedule 40 down into the 2” so I can slide the turbine up and down to service… and install it. Drilled 2 3/8” holes in the 2” pipe for brass tap screws to support the 1.5” pipe at any height. The unit works great, been up for a month, I’ll report back.

Installed on my 39 ft sailboat. When not spinning which is most of the time, it points 30 to 90 degrees off the wind. The blades don't start spinning automatically even in 10 to 15 mph winds. They only spin if I manually push start the blades, then they spin with the wind for a few moments before the entire windmill turns off the wind 90 to 180 degrees and the blades stop again. I tried a return but they won't except it back because I don't have the original box so I'm out $800.

It don't work as advertised needs about 15 mph to charge batts...I should have know better but as they say it is what it is.

I have started a log of wind speed (as measured by a high quality anemometer on our sailboat) vs current output. Current being viewed on the built in analog meter as well as a very accurate Victron battery monitor. Despite seeing a variety of winds up to 28-30 knots and occasional gusts reaching 35+, I have never seen more than 10A output. Typical output at 20 knots is 6A, so maybe there is something wrong with the unit I received. I have 10' of the recommended cable size and all connections are solid, so it's not that. Have tried with battery charge and voltage everywhere between nearly dead to fully charged. While the unit is obviously used outside and exposed the elements, the internal PCB with charge controller is not sealed and has exposed copper wiring which will most likely deteriorate quickly.

Installed the turbine for about a week now. Easy to install and everything works perfectly to generate power when the ocean breeze comes. Highly recommend this product.