mek71186 your solution will rely on a hybrid of course and entail as many charging sources as possible to complete your solar cat. Your going to spend an obscene amount of money. You might consider using electricity and gasoline for power sources.
To extrapolate some on what the above means translates into spending money. So order online your 440HVA charge controller. It doesn't have to be complicated and in fact you want simple. 
Next call the lithium god and magically he will bestow on you the perfect bank for your needs for there can be no other and you will be bonded to that bank through financial matrimony for life.
Next find that it is 2015 and a modest array of thin film flexible solar panels will surely power your lithium based solar catamaran for a decade easily and simply. Remember don't fall for any marketing keep it simple and import if you have to. Thin film solar 180watts can be had for 1.10 per watt.
You should count on making over 20amps continuous from your solar array. It must be adjustable at a minimum for effective solar catamaran. Laying panels flat is questionable practice that mostly can be motivated by excessive lithium battery capacity as in they have so much power they don't really care and or they have sized the solar array to be obscene in the amount of energy produced so as to offset house and propulsion loads based on their azimuth to the sun.
At this point lets not fool ourselves. Your upfront catamaran costs eventually play a role in the outfitting for most people. Everything is a cost and now that you have the ability to generate instantaneous power indefinitely there can be no expense spared.
Go 48volt. Everyone else really is missing the point of electric inboard/outboards and electric catamarans. Again keeping that 48v nominal has much to do with the simple availability of commodity hardware that just works reliably for years and years.
People and companies keep trying to reinvent the wheel when it comes to electric propulsion and each to their own depending on the selection of catamaran you have started with.
Hull speed for whatever length of catamaran you purchase is all your propulsion system needs to achieve with a modest buffer. Thinking outside that box only leads to unrelenting complexity and excessive costs. Especially from your simple consumer cruiser catamaran outlook.
For this simple example we rule out any type of battery that is not lithium and any type of charging source that denotes float, balance, equalize or other gimmicky names. Now consider for the example thusly:
120 or so small calb 72 amp hour cells. They pack the most energy density available into a small format and would roughly fill up the back of a small truck. Without getting into the numbers you have to further evaluate how you as the consumer will maintain this bank of batteries. Truth be told you will not be able to.
Lets define maintaining. Observation occasionally via voltage tester - individual cell readings important. If you don't have this ability don't buy the batteries. Electronically monitoring more than sixteen cells will also become problematic. The less electrical connections in a marine environment the better.
Now set your dump load cutoff on your 440HVA to 57volts and your high voltage contactor cutoff on your bank to 58volts and your charging solution for your lithium batteries is starting to take shape via simple flowchart. Feed your solar input in one string of 30amps into your charge controller. Disregard the wind generator and grab a couple of great 3000 watt smart 48v DC generators from ebay.
They start charging automatically at 46.5volts and stop charging at 56.5 volts. At idle they produce 12amps each and sip the fuel. If they start in automatic mode so when they sense the bank is 46.5 volts they produce power equivalent to the load and each unit can produce over 40amps so two of them in parallel will power over 80amps continuous. Once they reach 56.5v they stop.
Install these generators in parallel into the generator input on your 440HVA.
Now lets see what you have in terms of charging potential on your large prismatic lithium batteries. Solar amps charging at 25 amps for most of the day and the ability to automatically maintain your charge state with the generators at idle 25 amps. KISS if your doing close to hull speed in the 25-50amp range you have a winner.
Pick a nice shore power charger - nothing fancy but you want to go with the traditional Elcon 3000 if you have the chance. Remember you have kept things simple and so long as it is producing amps at the 48v nominal voltage your charging, so don't be too picky. A couple old 48v ferro resonant chargers can still produce 40amps. Just remember your large format lithium battery pack is near 100% efficient at converting charging solar or otherwise into stored energy.
Bottom line here is your watching the voltage of the bank on the bridge. You know your bms will spike the entire system at 58volts to protect itself via contactor separation. You know your charge controller will never let this happen as it disconnects the charging sources at 57volts. You know your smart generators are not wind generators so they don't even need a diversion load and you further understand they stop charging at 56.5 volts automatically. You also understand that solar charging in excess of 57 volts is pointless as the charge controller simply disconnects the solar input.
Further to that you can't miss big digital blue voltage meters showing you the bank voltage as your charging. A simple EV Display gives you a touch of simplicity for overall bank performance and state of charge fuel tank capacity all from your tablet device Captain.
Cost wise Captain I'm sure no one can measure that but there are pictures of electric boat owners out there that typify just how good something similar in design makes one feel. For example http://deny.org/Escape_the_American_Dream/Project_Pictures/Pages/Work_In_Progress.html#38 whereupon the owner really should have a caption that reads "What me worry!".
So you will find some attached photos of my botched electrical bread boarding of my 48v system on my catamaran. Even with wrong colored wires though (will be corrected to ABYC upon final install) the system was amazing to watch.
Over the course of a week I was able to test 12 180 flexible solar panels and charge at 24amps. I was able to parallel two smart dc generators and charge at idle 25 amps. I was able to charge at 20 amps each a couple old lestronic II 48vdc chargers simultaneously. I was able to wire in a smart EV Display and have state of charge meters sent to torque pro over android.
I was also able to run a couple of cycles from the incinolet so 40amps for two hours through the cotex 48v 3000w inverters.
Soon for me I hope to have a picture like above as I transition to physical rigging of 8M Bobcat catamaran. Your catamaran choice will of course be different but I certainly wouldn't be going with a high voltage i.e.: greater than 48v nominal for a cruising catamaran. Unless of course your going to be outfitting an electrically propelled gunboat or have the hulls for a fast cat.
I have already outfitted the tender cat with a 48v solution and the results for me at least were obvious. Put two electric outboard together and power the big cat. ioio
My list of things to purchase yet is getting smaller. A couple of Dehumidifiers and some plumbing accessories. But enjoy your build and do it your way within the confines of your budget and interpersonal relationships.
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