Nigel Calder’s Generator Replacement Machine, Part 2—Is It Really Better Than a Generator?

In Part 1 of our review of Nigel Calder's Integrel machine, we dug into how it works, why it's innovative, my worries about reliability, and why it is neither fault tolerant nor easily repairable in the field.

And, finally, we concluded that it was too expensive and complicated to be of use to cruisers who have reasonably modest daily power needs.

But what about those of us who want all the comforts of home and therefore use a lot of power in the run of a day, or even those with one foot in each camp?

Up until now, the only realistic way to achieve that was by fitting a separate generator. Yes, I know some cruisers are harvesting huge amounts of power using renewables, but, although I think that can be done on motorboats with plenty of deck space and little shading, doing this on sailboats results in un-seamanlike clutter and windage. Yea, I know, that's not a popular view, but when did that ever stop me?

So before you go any further into this chapter, you may want to take our simple test to see if you even need a generator, or Nigel's Integrel machine.

OK, still with us...you luster after all the comforts of home, you?  Let's shine the bright light of arithmetic rigour and analytical thinking on this thing.