Hi Steve,
You're in the smaller group of people here with a DC generator that is matched to your batteries, which makes more sense at the voltages that you're running. I would guess that you're also runing all of your house loads from the generator/battery bank too. With a 40'+ catamaran, the scale of your systems is different than the ones on a 28'-30' monohull. BTW, do you even have a shore charger?
For many of us with 36V-48V systems, dedicated DC generators don't seem to represent the same value as a more modular approach. Since many of us do have shore chargers, it's fairly simple to plug in the existing charger to a portable generator like a Honda or Yamaha. At only about $1000 for the generator, one can use the charger that's already wired into the system. Of course, this is just as a back-up to the main battery bank, not part of the regular drive system. At 50 pounds, the generator can be kept ashore for day sails and only brought along for longer excursions.
I'm glad that I went this route, especially with the huge windstorms that hit my neighborhood a couple of weeks ago (you may have heard about 100's of thousands without power in Los Angeles. My house came back online after 58 hours of outage, but our fridge and freezer were cold with lights in the kitchen and living room. With the generator running slow (the inverter system allows for clean 120VAC at lower throttle, not RPM dependant like construction generators) to match my reduced house load, I was getting almost 10 hours of power per gallon of fuel. It definately improved my wife's opinion about the expense of buying the little Yamaha EF2000iS.
On my boat, I was able to match my charger's draw closer to my generator's capacity. I get 28A of 54V (1500W) from my Elcon PFC 2000+. It pulls about 14A of 120VAC (measured with a Kill-a-Watt meter), which barely exceeds the max continuous rating of 1600W for the Yamaha, but I haven't seen a problem when I ran the generator/charger combo for an hour as a proof of concept. As another experiment, a 1850W hairdryer shut down the generator, so I know that it will try to protect itself from excessive loads. The same thing happened when I tried my home microwave oven during the blackout, but I was expecting that.
I know that there are some on this board who don't want a portable generator on board, and that's fine. We're lucky enough that there are a number of different solutions. For Mike, Myles and me, the portable generator solution seems to meet our needs.
Fair winds,
Eric
Marina del Rey, CA
--- In electricboats@yahoogroups.com, Steve Dolan <sdolan@...> wrote:
>
> Ok I get it.
>
> My genset output is 144v, direct to the batteries so in your case you're going through the Zivon to charge therefore are limited to its charge rate not the Honda's total output.
>
> Steve in Solomons MD
> Lagoon 410 Se
>
> Steve:
>
> Since I was maxing out the current limit of the Zivan NG-1 charger but, not of the Honda 2000 eu generator. My thinking was if I wanted to I could buy an additional small 48 volt power supply to connect to the battery bank to provide a little more current when operating under a "hybrid" mode. Don't really feel the need for it but, it is something that seems easily doable with an EP system using the Honda generator.
>
> Capt. Mike
>
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