g'day all,
I hope you don't mind my input here.
If you proceed and end up with a vehicle-mounted turbine, watch out for vibrations and resonance kicking through the tower if it is attached to the stationary vehicle. It does happen, maybe not all the time. Better to aim for a remote mount set up with wires to your vehicle.
On some small turbines the noise is hell in a stationary situation. On a sailboat noise is not an issue with the sails up and wind hauling you anyway. Stationary in a marina situation I have known of folk in other boats tossing ropes into a noisey turbine to stop them.
Turbulence is going to be an issue in many 'normal' camp positions and unless you intend to camp in a wind exposed clear-wind location you will have difficulty extracting any useful energy. Turbulence is calculated from the standard deviation of the mean ten minute wind spped. The greater the variation in ten minutes the greater the calculated turbulence. In high wind situations, wind turbines exposed to consistent turbulence eventually have failures. If it is designed heavy duty it is going to be heavy to lug from camp to camp.
Most small wind turbines start producing low amounts of energy at about 3-4 metres per second wind speed. Very low amounts of energy especially if the rated capacity is low to start with. Most turbines produce their rated output at around 12-15 metres per second. Check the power curve of any turbine you are thinking about to ensure some form of match with the wind resource you are likely to expose it to. The power curve is a curve in graphic form that indicates energy output of the turbine at various wind speeds. Check out how the power curve was derived. Some manufacturers are either inadvertantly or intentionally producing power curves in a manner likely to over state the output. In real life they are found to be much lower. Some power curves are derived from mounting the turbine on a truck bed and driving around a track. Others are derived from wind tunnel testing. Only a few are derived over time from a real world monitored output situation. I understand there are discussions happening to sort out recognised standards for deriving power curves in the small wind industry but I don't know if they are formed or being adopted. Last I heard a year or so ago it was a contentious issue. The National Renewable Energy Labs (NREL) in Colorado is a source of some real world test results. Also google "Paul Gipe", he has tested small wind turbines and a well recognised author in small and large wind, and independant, his tests are pretty sound. I have seen and heard of too many people stick their finger in the air and state something about the wind resource being good without knowing about power curves and being dissapointed later on down the line when they realise they are not getting what they anticipated.
The power available (W) in the wind is a function of half the air density (kg/m^3) x area of the turbine blade swept area (m^2) x the velocity (m/s) of the wind cubed [P(W)=0.5 x air density x Swept area (m^2) x wind speed^3 (m/s)]. In mountain areas air density is a lot lower than at sea level. Small turbines have small swept areas and can therefore extract small amounts of energy by rote of their size. You can increase your chances of increased energy by choosing a larger swept area (double the swept area double the output) but this means a larger blade diameter and larger turbine to install. Velocity cubed is the real number you need to pay attention to. The cubic function means small variations in wind speed have very large impacts on energy available. Camping in a wind consistent enough to get useful energy is going to be an ackward and uncomfortable experience after a while. A breeze simply won't cut it. A remote turbine with wires running back to camp would allow a sheltered camp but an exposed turbine.
I have worked in many areas of wind energy. I have studied wind and wind turbines for a number of years and I have worked in wind farm development. I enjoy working with the wind, wind resource engineering and turbines and extracting energy from it. I would not however consider a wind turbine for my camping. A mountain cabin, yes, a mobile camp situation, no. I prefer to be in sheltered locations and to be able to live/sleep without the vibrations and reverberations of a turbine buzzing intermittantly through the duration of my stay. Wind turbines are ideal for clear exposed consistent wind over time where you have battery capacity to see you over the calm periods. If you intend to camp in such locations so be it. Ideal. If not, but for curiosity as to whether it would work, I wouldn't bother.
Solar would be my first choice for consistent and predictable energy production from a mobile camp situation. Clean, reliable, consistent, unobtrusive, and quiet.
Regardless of what I say above, if curiousity drives you and you go for it I applaud you for satisfying your curiosity, and potentially, your energy requirements
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Cheers,
Phil