Hi Ricky
If my budget was a boat it would be a submarine :)
Thats pretty much all that keeps me from having more solar panels. I would like add more of the Solara panels on the floats - I can easily add two more 40 watt panels - one on each float, and another two on each of the front beams. Adding them in this way makes no impact on the usability of the boat. But at $1100 (australian) for each panel... well I just can't manage it at the moment.
And as for the trampolines, I do have two flexible panels from UniSolar and I roll them out when I'm at anchor. And its even ok to keep there when under sail and the wind is light. But when the speed gets up around 10 to 13 knots they start getting agitated and so I roll them up and store them in the floats.
With the solar panels that I have, and after the house load is accounted for, on sunny days I can get about 500 watthours of power for the engine batteries. And thats more or less how much I use each day when moving about from one anchorage to the next (say half hour motor use at 1000 watts) and when I'm in cruising mode. So even with my very meagre solar capacity its adequate when combined with low expectations.
What complicates things is if I have a visitor with a schedule to keep. And thats when the system can get stressed, if I let it. If its just me on board and its a rainy day, or a few rainy days, I just chill and can be content to stay where I am and not watch too many movies. (more watts!) Sometimes there's pressure to move, or one way or another use more power than is being harvested on overcast days, and thats when it would be nice to have those extra panels or extra storage capacity.
In a practical sense it is easy to add more capacity by changing my house batteries from lead-acid to lithium and this can be done with no weight penalty. And easy to add more energy harvesting capacity with more panels and getting around to rigging my wind generator again. But in a budgetry sense its not possible today. And there's those other things on my wish list too like a HF radio, and a better dinghy, and... well you know the boat list - its endless.
From all this you can probably guess if I had 100 kwh of storage, and a 3 kw power station on board I wouldn't feel the least bit constrained. For my electric boating aspirations it would be nirvana!
Cheers
Chris
On 07/05/2010, at 5:44 AM, r1ck_r0ck_4_ever wrote:
Hi everyone,
I personally understand how it feel to have a limited range vehicle as I've worked with electric vehicles and driven them pretty often. I think the nature of boating is to be free from any constrains and to be-able to go anywhere the sailor wants. If my client only needs 40mile range usually, but all of a sudden he decides to go out for a week's cruise and will need more motoring range, I don't want to all of a sudden be the one who said "look you don't need that extra range". He'll regret spending all his money because He is now constrained.
Chris,
What is keeping you from putting solar panels on and in-between the side hulls of your trimaran? Where the trampolines are? Are the trampolines there for a airflow functional purpose or something?
Regards,
Ricky
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