Good friends Helen and Steve of SY Cerulean had been looking, without success, to gift their broken Rutland WG1200 wind generator to someone who needed the parts. Then they heard I love a challenge. With the advent of solar panels, wind generators are a fading technology. They’re noisy, and the moving parts are a point of failure, but they do provide a back-up for cloudy days. After four days without sun in Panama, and batteries hitting the red line, this was just the addition I wanted.
“It just started spinning really slowly and it hardly puts out any power.” Helen messaged me later.
Sure enough, the axle felt hard to turn. I stripped the generator out of the plastic body. The unit can be replaced for around £800 but that money could
