T-Pain Is On A Boat: Re: [Electric Boats] Re: solar canal rambling

Wednesday, February 3, 2010

Re: [Electric Boats] Re: solar canal rambling

Chris:

On board my 30 foot sailboat I go with a three legged stool approach to charging my 48 volt battery bank. I have solar panels, wind generator and a Honda 2000 eu gas generator. Actually it's a four legged stool because I can also plug in to dockside power too. My wind generator is a 48 volt Marine Air X 400 watt unit. It is about $800 and works well to keep things charged up in combination with the solar panels. I don't think you need a big 2000 watt wind generator for your application. But, you should check out the winds in your cruising grounds. You might be better off with just solar panels and a generator for your charging needs. I may be wrong but, I don't think canals will have enough wind energy to make a wind generator a viable charging option.

Capt. Mike

http://biankablog.blogspot.com

--- On Tue, 2/2/10, toddbates99 <toddbates99@yahoo.com> wrote:

From: toddbates99 <toddbates99@yahoo.com>
Subject: [Electric Boats] Re: solar canal rambling
To: electricboats@yahoogroups.com
Date: Tuesday, February 2, 2010, 7:57 PM

Just a thought but would a wind generator be appropriate? 24 hour a day charging. The heaver the wind the better the charging. MIght have to have some sort of mount so it could be raised and lowered for bridges etc. And I have no idea what the winds would be like. A 2kw 48 volt system is about $2,000 US and 3 m in diameter. About the size of a dinghy sail so not much healing moment (depending on the mast height).

On the other hand wind generators can be noisy ( good design can prevent this ), mechanically complex and there are air draught issues.

--- In electricboats@ yahoogroups. com, "hardy71uk" <p0054107@.. .> wrote:
>
> Many thanks for all your replies .
> The LiFePO batteries certainly do seem to make it feasible if they live up to their reputation. Charging at marinas seem to be too expensive in the UK as they are geared more for long term mooring rather than overnight stops.
>
> regards
> Chris S
>
> --- In electricboats@ yahoogroups. com, "hardy71uk" <p0054107@> wrote:
> >
> > theres an extensive canal network here in UK. I've often thought it would be great to do a leuisurely trip . stopping for a while to explore an area whilst charging batteries from solar panels and then moving on. The problem would seem to be that if charging over say a week or two that the batteries would most of the time be only partly charged . Is this a fast way to kill lead acid batteries or would a slow charge resist sulphation?
> > I'm guessing that a better regime would be to just do a few miles per day using a small depth of charge. Any comments?
> >
>