"Skip Gundlach" skipgundlach sez use my name at earthlink dot
fishcatcher (net) - with apologies for the spamtrap wrote in
:

Hm. Help me with the math. As a lapsed math, physics and chem major,
I don't remember my stuff all that well. However, I'll have right in
the neighborhood of 500W solar

How big are these solar panels? A Kyocera KC120 panel at 120 watts is:
Max power: 120 Watts
Max voltage: 16.9 Volts
Max current: 7.10 Amps
Dimensions (LxWxD): 56.1" x 25.7" x 2.2"
Weight: 26.3 lbs

4 of those kinda hinders going on deck, I suppose. Or, do you mean 500
watt-hours per day?? 500 watts x 8 hours = 4 KWh/day...pretty nice!

, and a KISS wind generator in the
Caribbean. Various vendors suggest I take the wattage and divide by 3,
or 4 if really lousy weather, for a reasonable typical AH input,
daily. My math has that at 170-125AH/day, plus some other unknown -
but apparently pretty substantial - AH from a KISS.

Solar is useless on cloudy days, but that's when the wind is usually
blowing so you got it covered.

Speaking of wind power, have you see http://www.otherpower.com/
These homebrewers are really producing KWh!


Our anticipated daily budget is about 125AH; we'll have (for
simplicity in this calculation) ~1250AH capacity. It's our
presumption that we'll have 4-5 days capacity, in the most
unimaginable (in the Caribbean) circumstance of continuous no wind or
sun.

Have I missed something here?

No, not at all. The big inverters are great for QUICK and TEMPORARY loads,
even heavy loads if the battery banks can produce the heavy load currents
without sagging a lot.

Too bad boats don't use 48 volts instead of "car power". The whole thing
becomes much more efficient as the voltage rises.