I've been easy over the past eight or nine years - Santa can bring me boat stuff and it works.
Random time is over, I have needs :)
Here's the problem boys and girls, I like power, I use power, I have to replace power.
Gee, you ask - how much power do you need - you are already the skipper of your boat, the captain, master of your destiny.
Well - the answer gets complicated. Farting around on your boat can take many different forms and the consumption and manufacture of electricity can as well.
Woe to the dude who gets up in the morning and cranks a key to clicking sounds from the engine compartment.
My daily draw can exceed 70 amp hours (a amp hour is using 1 amp for 1 hour - a typical light on a boat draws 1 amp per hour).
Some boaters basically wing it. Some get all anal retentive about it. I'm somewhere in the middle, for instance I don't turn down the stereo speakers to save power (those are after all 100 watt speakers) but the meter does trickle away in my mind....
Here's my usage, broken down by category.
CPAP (apnea) - 1.2 amp - 7 hours = 9ah
Stereo (must have) 1.4amp - 10 hours = 14ah
Anchor light 1.1 amp - 9 hours = 10ah
Lights - 1amp each - 6 = 6ah
Fans (3) .5 - .7amp = 5ah
Standard - = 16ah
Additional/random = 10ah
Standard is a fill in for CO2 detector, propane shut off valve (fails shut on loss of juice), fridge fan, battery monitor etc.. all that stuff you can't shut off.
Additional is all those other things - water pump, phone charging, turning on my wind instuments just to check, GPS for anchor alarm or chartting my next day..just 'stuff'. It can go higher (laptop charge) but seldom goes lower.
My current 'system' - because it has to be viewed as a system not a list of components - is:
Cranky - what I call my Westerbeke 30B diesel. It has a standard 55 amp alternator.
80W Kyocera solar panel - makes 30-40 amp hours a day on a good day.
Xantrex C12 controller 3 stage charger - max amp out is 12, normal is 3 to 4.
Xantrex XBM monitor - to watch all this magic happening.
I have battery chargers and combiners and such; we'll skip them because this is about hook time, not pier side. The combiner is a safety feature - puts the banks together or detaches them on low voltage to prevent that nasty silence thing when I turn the key.
So that leads me to this - begging
A 240w solar panel.
A 20 amp controller for the above (ask me for the brand).
A pair of Trojan batteries to hold the output (ditto, ask me for size and type).
Get in line folks, I expect the offers to come pouring in any day.
Love to send you some batteries but since we are purchasing something like 4-5 of the Big Uns from W.M. we have surpassed our battery budget for the decade. And we haven't even gotten to solar panels yet. On second thought, how about some well abused, I mean loved AGMs that won't hold a charge?
ReplyDeleteLamp oil works if your budget is tight. I've been know to raft up so I can use someone else's anchor light.
ReplyDeleteYou can call me Scrooge, I call me practical (well, actually, most of the time I call myself "self" as in "self, you need to quit smoking again").