I am in the third season of pushing a 25' mono hull sail boat (with mast and sail removed) using two 450 Watt panel arrays (900 watt total) charging two 200 AH 12v battery banks with separate charge controllers for each bank and array driving two 0.66 HP electric motors. (3.5 knots avg)
A few of my lessons learned:
- Be careful about extending your panel array outside the profile of the boat. Solar panels don't interact well with dock structures, lock walls, trees, and other boats and need the protection of the hull/railing.
- As to be expected, the battery array is the choke point on productivity. Make sure the production of your solar array does not exceed the charge rate (C rating) of the battery array. Even with MPPT, if the batteries can't take the current, the voltage rise triggers the charge controller to toss off the excess power from the panels as heat.
- Item number 2 applies if you are using your solar array for recharging batteries only. If you are sailing on a sunny day, the excess power from the panels will go through the charge controller, across the batteries into load, and you will be able to use every bit of power your panels produce up to the rated capacity of the Charge Controller for propulsion (or refrigeration, electronics, etc...)
- I have one of the Outback 80 MPPT Charge Controllers in use in a land based application. I haven't regretted the extra money for the unit one bit. Solid construction, excellent battery management, and heaven for data geeks, tracks and records 128 days of all sorts of wonderful statistics about power production and battery condition.
- If you are only using your boat now and then, a small array (300 watts – 450 watts per 200 Amp Hours of storage) can bring a battery array to full charge within two days. You "mine" your batteries when you go out on a cruise to 50% capacity, Park the boat and be ready to go out again two days later.
- The framing for the panel array should be sturdy enough you can crawl out on it for resealing the calking between panels or cleaning.
- You can get a telescoping long handled window cleaner to wash off leaves, dead bugs, bird crap, pollen and other atmospheric deposition.
- Panel wash-down is best done early morning with the dew condensate.
I only wish I was following the discussion in this group earlier, I would be using 48 V system as opposed to a 12V system. Version 4.0 will ramp up to that level for sure!
Thanks,
Ken Cooke
KY-0717-FX Solar Cruiser
Kentucky River
From: fitloose
Sent: Monday, August 29, 2016 12:36 AM
Subject: [Electric Boats] Re: Okay, planning my solar charging installation.
Cal,
A guy in the company I work for wrote this:
Bottom line make sure panel voltage at least +5 V over battery voltage for early morning start up, longer day charging. Separate MPPT controllers for each array to suit battery better due to boat shading. Sheet above has custom tab for own make panels. Panel temperature has a significant effect on output and in cold temperatures voltage can get too high for controller if not accounted for.
John R
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Posted by: "Ken Cooke" <ken.cooke@canewoods.com>
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