T-Pain Is On A Boat: Re: [Electric Boats] 48V to 12V

Saturday, February 19, 2011

Re: [Electric Boats] 48V to 12V

Hi Chris
Looked at that site they also have a converter that would charge the 48 volt bank from 12 volt panels that looks interesting as it would mean that if one of four solar panels is shaded I would still get some charging..
Using the equalizer would also mean not having to worry about the bilge pump drawing thru a converter. It is definitely a better scenario in a failure situation..It may also be a bit easier to carry a spare..
I will be looking into it.Since I plan to have a series parallel battery bank there will be a lot available to top up the feed battery.
Richard

--- On Sat, 2/19/11, chris Baker <chris@currentsunshine.com> wrote:

From: chris Baker <chris@currentsunshine.com>
Subject: Re: [Electric Boats] 48V to 12V
To: electricboats@yahoogroups.com
Received: Saturday, February 19, 2011, 1:33 PM

Now that the crux of this discussion has turned to reliability its worth thinking about this in relation to the battery equaliser solution I mentioned earlier in this thread. http://www.solarconverters.com/

In this case the load is coming from one of four propulsion batteries in a 48v pack. If the equaliser fails, you still have supply to your critical 12v equipment such as bilge pump and radio.

And seeing that the converter has failed you'd be wanting to take notice of the voltage of the tapped battery using, say, a multimeter. If its voltage drops to any concerning degree simply reconnect the 12v load to another battery of the series. And continue manual monitoring. And swap again if necessary.

Charging of the 48v pack continues as normal (whatever normal is, such as regen or solar).

It seems to me that this solution is can easily handle the failure situation. Even if you are crossing an ocean, or otherwise remote from repair facilities.

Cheers

Chris