I have been running a 16 foot pontoon boat as primary access to a cottage for the last 8 years.
The boat is a simple standard aluminum pontoon setup. I am using two Minn Kota 50AT trolling motors (50 dollars each to buy!) a Hyundai 24 to 36 volt golf car PWM controller ( 120 bucks new from ebay) four solenoid reversing contactor, made from regular 12 volt rv style battery solenoids (again, cheap) and two 144 AH 12 volt flooded batteries. System voltage is 24, batteries are solar charged by two 50 watt panels and a Morningstar charge controller.
This works quite fine for bringing people, luggage and building supplies across a small lake. We also do regular sunset cruises around the lake.
A video can be seen here,
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=120692464644250
The whole deal was deliberately kept simple and cheap as we dock the boat next to a public landing and people are not always respectful of other peoples property. There were a few upgrades this spring that have not been documented yet. A new canopy and solar panels for one.
I know there are more professional looking boats out there and a few electric pontoon, commercial boat builders frequent this list as well. But we kept it simple and cheap and have not had to buy a single litre of gasoline for this boat! That is the best thing for us.
More info can be found here, http://www.evalbum.com/1538 but I do need to provide proper updates to that page.
--- In electricboats@yahoogroups.com, "Gordon" <gerutzen@...> wrote:
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> Has anyone successfully converted a 20 ft pontoon boat to electric propulsion? I have a couple of EV's, but I've never converted a boat. I'd rather not just buy an off-the-shelf electric outboard motor, but rather assemble the entire drivetrain myself together with a PWM controller. Any suggestions or success stories?
>
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