My Link10 was using power from the House bank. Well let me back up a bit. Everything was powered through the 144v Propulsion bank. 144v was then sent to a distribution box that split it off to a 144v DC to 120v AC 6kw inverter and the 144v to 12v converter to charge the 3 house batteries which had the Link10 power feed connected to it. The Link10 isn’t working any more so I installed the Paktrakr monitoring system and couldn’t be happier. Since I’m on shore power the trickle charge keeps up with the small losses. The thing I didn’t like was the fact that everything was going through the $8k propulsion battery pack and the Link10 just didn’t give me enough information to determine what the true state of individual batteries were so the BMS upgrades became a priority this year. Unlike most of you here I bought the boat with the engineered system already installed so a lot of issues are inherited. Back in 04 there wasn’t much offered in the way of BMS systems. A number of things have been upgraded since but not a way to manage a large pack of very expensive batteries that as Dave said “are usually murdered”. Everything I’ve read and heard has lead to some means of Monitoring and Balancing large strings of batteries to maintain their health and therefore extend their life, in my way of thinking, until the next best storage device comes along. Balancing maintains the strings lowest battery to very close to the highest one so they charge and discharge almost equally. Again from what I’ve read a lot of people are just running a meter across the batteries to find out if there is a problem. I like the fact that I’m constantly monitoring and hopefully balancing the batteries somewhat automatically. This means that when the pack charger reaches 166v in trickle all the batteries are fully charged because the power was balanced between them. The PakTrakr will tell me if there is an issue with an overcharged/undercharged battery. To that end I’m looking at a dual display utilizing a (hopefully) IPAD to sit at the NAV station that I can see across the Saloon and the standard PakTrakr display at the Helm. I’m also looking at an alarm that will set off if there is any “issues”. Mike the graphics will be awesome compared to the display that comes with the Paktrakr plus I can see everything on 1 screen without pushing buttons.
I’ve pretty much decided to order the HDM system, just waiting to clear the Visa bill from last month, and I’ll place an order. O ya there is the haul out and stuffing
Steve in Solomons MD
I’ve been using a Link10 meter for some 7yrs now…didn’t bother with using a DC-DC converter, but probably should.
It’s been powered by 24v of the 36v pack as the manufacturer suggests.
True, it sucks power, perhaps as much as 50ma, which could add up to 1.2Ah/day.
So, in 30 days, those cells could be down significantly.
For me, that means going out to the boat more often or accept a shorter range or bring the genset.
Better would be to install a small dedicated DC-DC for this.
I have one to install, just have been lazy.
And while there’s a 36v:12v DCDC installed on the boat, as a 300w converter, it’s too big for just powering the Link10…it would likely draw significantly more power from the pack than the Link10 uses now.
So if you do add a DC/DC for a power monitor like the Link10, Paktraker or others, be sure to have it be a smaller, dedicated and efficient one.
-mt
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