"I'm thinking of trying to purchase a 38 ft. - 45 ft. cruising catamaran and convert it to all electric (or hybrid if necessary) and am looking for suggestions or concerns. I am particularly interested in expected conversion costs and the types of power sources one might use."
I don't know if your aware of the Lagoon 410 (41') or the 420 (42') Electrics produced in the past.
3 Lagoon 410's were produced as a test for the Solomons Technologies system in 2004. This system was built around a 144V pack of Lead Acid batteries with twin 9KW motors. It has a 16KW genset for a running backup and charging capabilities. The original Pack would allow for roughly 3 hours of run time however the batteries were junk and didn't last long. The 3 owners went to AGM's of different quality and improved their run times. All 3 boats were brought to the States or Islands on their bottoms. In 2 of the boats cases it was written that they had more electricity than they knew what to do with and ran the motors or ran the A/C systems to blead off power do to prop. Regen. It was later discovered that they could have moved the throttles slightly into reverse to stop the regen.
I own the 3rd one produced and currently moving to LiFePo4's and upgrading the BMS (ORION) and the Battery Monitoring System (custom/preproduction one from Andromeda). Once I have the Monitoring system installed I'll post on it. I can say is it's going to be incredible. With a 144V pack I run at about 60A (total) for the motors. I plan on removing the "house" load with solar panels also this winter, roughly 500W of solar, to reduce the loads on the Propulsion pack extending my run times.
Do to some "differences in management" between the 2 companies Lagoon decided to go off on their own and developed the 420 as their idea of hybrid which involved a 72V pack and was to be marketed as the best thing out there for a Charter Fleet. Let's just say it didn't work and Lagoon ended up offering a free replacement of the electrical motors to a conventional Dyno system. There are a few of them left out there but I have no idea how many. Most would be owned by those who were willing to tinker and understood the system enough to operate it properly.
Someone recently had a Solomons Tech system for sale here. You might look back and see if he is still interested in selling it at a good price. I would highly recommend the 144V systems over lesser ones.
Steve in Solomons MD
Posted by: "Sdolan" <sdolan@scannersllc.com>
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