Re: [electricboats] Has Anyone Put an Hour Meter in the Electric Propulsion system?

I agree with Myles that there may not be a practical reason for needing an hour meter.

But I do think it would be a very nice to have feature.

On my diesel boat, I track the hours and fuel levels in my log.  It's nice to be able to reference for other (not necessarily engine related) reasons.

And it's awesome bragging rights.   It's hard to say how many miles you've cruised.  But you can at least say how many hours you've put on your system.

It might also be nice for battery life.   At 0 hours, you installed new batters.  At XXX hours, you observed the battery capacity was at ZZ percent, compared to new.   At YYY hours, controller / battery / cable / motor failed for whatever reason and was replaced.

Necessary - no.

Nice to have - I think so.

John

On Wednesday, July 17, 2024 at 11:22:06 AM CDT, Myles Twete via groups.io <matwete=comcast.net@groups.io> wrote:

I converted my boat to electric in 2003 and have been active in this forum, its predecessor on Yahoo Groups (which I owned/moderated for a very long time) and on the ElectricBoating forum (which I started) before that.  I haven't used any hour meter on my system.

It took 20 years before I had a controller die---think it was a year ago---and that was likely due to ignoring weed pileup on my prop versus having hundreds or thousands of hours on the controller.

 

For those few of us who still run their boat with brush motors, there's a case to be made for having an hour meter in order to estimate time for replacing brushes (I've gone thru 3 or 4 brush sets over the past 21 years).  Having said that, perhaps a better estimator of brush wear though would be to track AH or KWH since run time alone doesn't reflect the stressors (current, speed and temperature) that work together to cause the brushes to wear.

 

-MT

 

 

On Sun, Jul 7, 2024 at 11:23 PM THOMAS VANDERMEULEN via groups.io <tvinypsi=gmail.com@groups.io> wrote:

Has anyone out there seen fit to put an hour meter in their electric propulsion system?  If so, where amonng the functional circuits did you put it?
Just curious to hear any thinking on the usefulness of an hour meter.
Thanks!
[-tv]
Thomas VanderMeulen
Plainwell, MI