Arby mentioned: "I've tried running a charger while under way, and found it quickly overheated under the strain. Additionally, as much as I like the Honda3000i genny, it has a side-draft carb, and is not marine rated."
The Honda EUx000i gensets have seen use in a huge variety of environments and while you need to take good care of them, I've never heard anyone say don't use one onboard because it isn't marine rated. Onboard my boat for many years now I have an ETEK brush motor, ALLTRAX controller, LINK10 battery monitor, GE DC/DC converter, onboard LESTER charger and other electrical and electronic equipment NONE of which are marine rated. Sure, get marine rated equipment if you need it, but many of the boaters on this list do not have boats which spend the bulk of their time in salt water or very humid habitat. It's just not an issue for us.
As for charger "overheating under the strain" of running while underway, I have to wonder what kind of cheap charger that is or whether it was provided adequate cooling---I mean, if it can't handle full rated current for the several hours while underway, why would you have confidence in it overnight? I have run my Honda EU2000i while underway for at least 11-hours straight on 2 occasions. In the one instance, I ran with a single 20-amp, 36v Lester charger plugged in, delivering 720watts to my pack. IN the second case, traveling some 35-miles upstream, I ran the Lester along with a home-built Vicor power supply, together delivering a constant 40amps into 36v, for 1440watts continuous, all day long. Neither the chargers nor the genset overheated under the strain. I have nothing but praise for these Honda gensets. Ideally, for charging underway, you would be best to go with a high efficiency, voltage-limited, current-sourcing, current-adjustable power supply. Start the genset, plug in the power supply then slowly increase the current delivered by the supply to your pack. My Vicor power supply current wasn't adjustable by a knob, but I was able to add or remove individual 4-amp modules as needed. So when I had 6 or 7 of these 48v modules mounted, the charger tried to source 24-28amps in addition to the 20-amps from the Lester and when I did this, within a short time the genset would quit. I kept removing modules until the genset could handle the load----that was with 5 of the 4-amp modules plus the 20-amp Lester delivering a total of 40amps at 36v to the batteries---
-Myles Twete, Portland, OR.
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