Re: [electricboats] Electrically powered dingy on a mothership sailboat that only anchors

The reason that I asked was because I'm in the planning stages of purchasing a sailboat and I'm kind of fond of my electricity. With all the things on a sailboat that can shadow a solar panel and since a shadow over a single panel can severely attenuate the output of all the panels that are ganged together with that panel, it makes sense to wire each panel separately into the controller so that this doesn't happen. Most of the controllers that I'm seeing have space for three pairs of wire. I've seen a couple of examples where there are two or three of these controllers connected together. In my mind it's better to have a single controller to handle all the electrical generation sources on the boat. (This conversation seems to be wandering way off course and I'm not helping things.)

On 3/6/2020 1:42 AM, mosslandingcreatures wrote:

Because I'm a layman with limited electrical expertise I can only say "I've heard it's best that the electrical harvest devises be the same as each if either paralleled or series connected together or the controller will be confused or the stronger or weaker  of the two will bring the other down"

On Thu, Mar 5, 2020 at 9:50 PM Bill Farina <bill@thirdcoast.us> wrote:

Speaking of shadowing, if you have a bunch of solar panels... maybe a wind generator and regen, what do you do? Do you take a number of controllers and gang them together, or is there a controller with maybe 10-15 inputs that someone could recommend for not a huge price?

On 3/5/2020 2:46 PM, Kevin Pemberton wrote:

I would agree. Most mounting must be industrial quality. After seeing almost anything fly off deck though well lashed down, manual setting works best.

My experiments tell me in a stationary setting tilting panels every 1 or 2 hours will yield enough power that any other effort is just wasted. 

Another issue is shadowing. When one panel is partly shaded,the whole is brought down...For this reason I recommend a controller for every panel in the system. 

I  have more but I am not on the computer. 

On Thu, Mar 5, 2020, 12:25 PM mosslandingcreatures <mosslandingcreatures@gmail.com> wrote:

Uni axis currently tilted manually. Wish I knew of a durable reliable automatic tracker but everything I see online seems like it won't hold up to Ocean cruising environment. Do you know of one? I was just introduced to the Victron smart Cyrix. It seems like the answer? Thank you for your calcs and assistance! Let me know what you think.

On Thu, Mar 5, 2020 at 9:10 AM Kevin Pemberton <pembertonkevin@gmail.com> wrote:

Your post raises more questions. 

Do the panels follow the sun?... my panels when flat produce 1/4 the power.  At best 4/5ths of rated power. 

Just because the voltage is up mid day tells you nothing. When you turn the panel switch off what is the battery bank reading?

The last 20% of a lead acid bank can take more than ten hours.

800w motor, 1000w panel. 2hrs at 800w=1600w. Real numbers on the array bet more like 300w if flat. 

Check the numbers for your installation. 

If dink is high priority, consider splitting the array and dedicating some to the dink. Or add panels to the dink. 

Kevin

On Wed, Mar 4, 2020, 8:42 AM mosslandingcreatures <mosslandingcreatures@gmail.com> wrote:

My first time on this wonderful info site. I thought my project would be easy. Mothership sailboat has 1k solar power with a 3k Victron inverter Charger powering the usual refer, autopilot, dc water maker and the like. House bank is 800 Ah. She has a Honda 2000 generator but I would dearly want not have to use it. With typical use and southern California/Mexico daylight and uniaxis pv tilt I hit float usually by mid day or so. I want my house bank to never dip below 50% DOD. I want componentry to see the house floating and send remaining power to a separate dedicated inverter??? To power the 120 v charger to drive 200 Ah lithium battery onboard the ding?... Echo charger relay??? I want rapid as possible charging of the dingy battery so I might use the 800 watt dingy motor for 2 hours every day. Any ideas ladies and gentlemen?