Hi all,
At 12:46 AM 10/07/2010, Harry Wilkins wrote:
>The overarching goal is to be as efficient as possible by cutting losses.
><snip>
>The best practice would be to store your power in your battery bank
>at whatever voltage your biggest load will be. In the case of
>electric propulsion that would be your motor voltage.
That the electric propulsion would be the biggest load seems the obvious answer, but I wonder if it is necessarily so?
In my case the house load is the biggest the load. And by load I'm thinking in terms of kwhr of consumption, rather than highest current or voltage. And given the context of the discussion, about losses, it would be energy usage that we need to consider.
And in my case the main consumer of energy is the fridge. It works 24/7 and probably needs around 15 to 30 ah per day at 12v to keep it fed. Thats about 0.2 to 0.4 kwhr each day. Add to that other house loads such as the usual electronic stuff that we collect about us, such as laptop, phone and so on that all get more use than I'd prefer. It all adds up to a big demand on my power generation, which is primarily from the sun. (the house load is perhaps around 0.5 kwhr) The worst days for power balance are rainy days when I'd like to watch dvds and otherwise be indoors and using more power than if was out in enjoying the sunshine. On these days there's barely enough incoming energy to supply the house needs let alone have any leftover for the engine batteries.
On the days that I do use the engine its power demand is about the same order of magnitude as the fridge. (Say 1000 watts for 20 minutes). And I don't use it every day. Even when seriously cruising.
Now admittedly my situation is different to those with a genset on board, but even so I suspect that such a device might be an attractor of house load. You know how it goes - now that we have a power station on board we might as well have a microwave, and a washing machine, and a wide screen TV and so on
Whatever your particular case, its worth doing the drudgery of the numbers just to be sure where the power will be going...
Cheers
Chris
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