T-Pain Is On A Boat: RE: [Electric Boats] Charging batteries in series?

The batteries are installed in a 1978 Beneteau First 30.
25' waterline, 7500lbs displacement.
Deep fin lead keel, drawing 5'8" and weighing 3750lbs (50% ballast).
The prop is a 12" diameter x 14" pitch, 7/8" shaft, fixed 3-blade with
about 65% blade-area ratio.
I had a new shaft made since the old one was rather worn and was 22mm.

The system is a PM-20 from Electroprop.com.
This is a 5.5kw system based on the Motenergy ME0913 dual-stator
brushless motor and Sevcon Gen4 controller and a 2.5:1 fixed helical
gearbox (Browning?) to a standard Borg-Werner 4-bolt coupler.
There is a flexible coupler between the shaft coupler face and the
gearbox coupler face. This takes up 1" of drive-train length. I
accounted for this when I had my new prop shaft machined. It is long
enough that should the flexible couple shear (as designed), I can remove
it, and direct-couple the shaft and gearbox flanges and keep motoring.
To keep costs down, I kept my shaft-log and prop strut / cutless bearing
which were for a 22mm shaft size.
However, I decided to go for a 7/8" shaft taper (metric taper is 10:1,
standard is 12:1), prop and coupler in order to have easier access to
off-the-shelf (or second hand) hardware. This required I have the 7/8"
shaft machined down to 22mm for the final 12" in order to fit through
the strut and cutless bearing. This also means I can not remove the
shaft to the stern past the rudder -- it must come out forward, through
the engine bay, which requires removing the motor. This is not nearly
so daunting a prospect with the much lighter electric drive.

I did the install entirely myself, and relied heavily on James Lambden
(owner of Electroprop) to clear up any issues I had. He has immense
experience installing and advising, and I think his advice made my
install better and safer than had I gone about it on my own. Though we
are located in different time zones and in opposite corners of North
America, him in Santa Barbara, California and me in Montreal, Quebec,
this didn't pose any significant problem. Money was sent instantly via
paypal, phone calls were a negligible cost and email allowed any
pictures or supporting documentation to be sent back and forth.

As an exercise, I sourced all the discrete parts of the PM20 online in
order to compare prices.
The difference is less than you'd think. And if you factor in
controller programming and wiring harnesses, it probably works out in
favour of Electroprop. A bare Sevcon controller is not an end-user
component. It needs significant configuration before it can be used
with a particular motor. So then you are looking at motor/controller
pairs. But then there are the different use-cases of forklift, electric
car, golf cart, and boat. These vehicles will all have parameter
differences. In electric boats, we have no use for creep settings.
Regenerative braking profiles between tire/road and prop/water are as
different as can be. The Sevcon has over 1000 parameters to be set,
most of which cannot be set using the Clearview display. So you'd need
the controller programmer or some other means of programming it. What
this amounts to is you are going to purchase your motor/controller from
a vendor somewhere somehow. It is their controller programming that
defines the behaviour of your boat. Things like
acceleration/deceleration ramps, alarm thresholds, etc. Even system
voltage, which will be different between Lead Acid, Lithium, etc. Some
people use 15-cell packs and call that 48V nominal. I am using a
16-cell pack (4x 4-cell bundles). Another big plus of the vendor
system: the wiring harness. Wiring up that 35-pin connector would have
been easy to do, but a royal pain in the a$$. I traded a bit of money
for a big savings in time on that one at least.

Sorry for rambling on and on. Got a little more than you bargained for
on that question, didn't you? ;-)

Cheers,

/Jason

On 2015-02-09 09:22, mountain man mdemers2005@hotmail.com
[electricboats] wrote:
> Jason ,
>
> Your batteries drive what size motor and in what kind of boat?
>
> Martin
>
> -------------------------
> To: electricboats@yahoogroups.com
> From: electricboats@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Sat, 31 Jan 2015 08:50:50 -0500
> Subject: Re: [Electric Boats] Charging batteries in series?
>
> It's 16x SP-LFP100AHA cells with the miniBMS and EV Display SOC meter
> from CleanPowerAuto.
> Everything was purchased from Canadian Electric Vehicles in BC.
> Including taxes and shipping to Quebec, it came in at about $3000
> Canadian.
>
> The cells themselves were $135cdn each.
>
> I wanted to deal with a Canadian company for the cells, so that I
> could avoid any hassles with importing an shipping lithiums across
> borders. I think I did well to go that route. Shipping was under $200
> (Victoria,BC to Montreal,QC!) with pick-up at the trucking depot.
> Randy at CanEV was great to deal with. I recommend him wholeheartedly.
>
>
> More than lead acid? Yup.
> More than quality AGMs? Not by much.
> My pack is 4 banks of 4 cells, each weighing 30lbs. Installed behind
> the engine, it's a simple affair to pick them up with one hand and
> remove them for the winter. They are currently sitting their shipping
> crate in my basement, waiting for our < -20C winter temps to go away.
>
> Lithiums are the way to go.
>
> Cheers,
>
> /Jason
>
> On Jan 29, 2015, at 09:39, 'Richard Sanders' rsandersemail@gmail.com
> [electricboats] <electricboats@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
>
>> Jason,
>>
>> If I do the math correctly that would be around 104 Amp hours at 48
>> volts. If I may ask, how much do you think you have into that pack
>> in cost?
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> Ric Sanders
>>
>> FROM: electricboats@yahoogroups.com
>> [mailto:electricboats@yahoogroups.com]
>> SENT: Thursday, January 29, 2015 8:02 AM
>> TO: electricboats@yahoogroups.com
>> SUBJECT: Re: [Electric Boats] Charging batteries in series?
>>
>> NiFe chemistry is ideal for fixed off-grid situations. In a zombie
>> apocalypse, I would love the ever-loving snot out of a NiFe battery
>> pack. Lye for the electrolyte can be made onsite from filtering
>> water through wood ash. So these cells can be terminal shorted, or
>> charged until they boil dry, then rebuilt and be good to go. But for
>> a sailboat? I'll keep my 125lb 5kwh lithium pack, thanks. It will be
>> good for more cycles than I'll have my boat, even though I hope to
>> keep her a very long time.
>>
>> In an off-grid house at resale, the state of the battery pack is a
>> big unknown and will therefore impact the price, like a roof at the
>> end of its life... NiFe iron batteries can just be topped up or have
>> the electrolyte replaced and be good to go. So I doubt they would
>> lose their value with time.
>>
>> /Jason
>>
>> On Jan 29, 2015, at 01:14, 'Myles Twete' matwete@comcast.net
>> [electricboats] <electricboats@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Regarding NiFe batteries, Jeff indicated:
>>>
>>> "Wow, this *is* interesting. I'm looking at the spec sheet for
>>> the 300Ah cell at 1.2v. So for 48v I would need 40 of them, and at
>>> 23.1 lbs per cell, that is close to 900lbs of battery :) Using
>>> their pricing page it looks like that pack would cost $11,400. Has
>>> anyone used these for EV applications yet? I do love the idea that
>>> you can abuse the crap out of them. They claim 11,000 cycles."
>>>
>>> Jeff- Such a pack would yield just shy of 15kwh and cost almost
>>> 1.5x what my 30kwh of ex-THINK EnerDel lithium modules cost (3x
>>> kwh/$). My pack weighs about 650# (3x kwh/#). If you have $11k for
>>> batteries, there are lots of options available to you.
>>>
>>> As for cycle life, for pleasure boat use, more than a thousand
>>> cycles seems like a multi-lifetime concern and value. I mean, how
>>> many of us charge our packs more than 3x per month on average?
>>> I'd guess that with PbA, I was at about 30 charge cycle per year
>>> usage. Now with a larger lithium pack, I probably am looking at
>>> 15-20 charge cycles per year. My pack is likely good to 2000
>>> cycles with still 80% capacity after that---i.e. these lithium
>>> batteries' won't be seeing that cycle life for the next 100
>>> years and will more likely die from some other fate before then.
>>>
>>> I couldn't place a value on 11,000 cycles for a pleasure boat
>>> battery pack unless it were also my commute boat or I otherwise
>>> got it out every day of the year for 35 years and had to recharge
>>> it daily.
>>>
>>> -Myles
>

--
Jason Taylor
--
S/V Fugu
1978 Beneteau First 30
Electroprop PM-20