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  all right everyone uh welcome to another   session of uh tech talk uh with jeff   cote here at pacific yacht systems all   right we've got a question from a fellow   boater the boater asks and sets up the   question and goes i have a new boat to   me that has two inverter chargers one   inverter for redundancy and two chargers   to charge a large house battery bank   all right so it must be a big boat and   roy was at anchor and he noticed a   little bit of an oil diesel slick from   his diesel generator   and um   roy called the mechanic and asked why is   it that his generator seems to be   overworking   and the mechanic told roy   that if i had two chargers on and a hot   water tank   that maybe was too much load   all right   so   without being too specific to roy's   question but also enough general   information for everyone the reality is   that many of us as boaters even though   we have a generator on our boat that   generator honorable and for most of us   that would be in ac generators not that   it's the only choice you can have but   most likely it's an alternating current   generator   the loads that exist on a boat   quite often exceed   the capacity of any generator or even   shore power of a boat and it really   doesn't matter if your boat is  feet    feet  feet  feet   to be honest it happens quite a lot that   us boaters have to   manage power   and certainly in the situation what   roy finds himself is that he has two   inverter chargers   which the two chargers uh working   together at the same time in a hot water   tank   could easily uh you know a charger could   easily take depending on the size of the   charger right um you know  amp   charger could easily draw    amps and if it's  amp charger or    amp charger that could be  amps at   .   so it's not hard to imagine that if you   have two chargers working at the same   time   and you've got a hot water tank also   running   that you're going to be loading up that   generator quite a lot so the good news   is for most of us   um there's going to be actually an   amperage uh meter or an amp meter at the   ac panel and that should give you a   little bit of a clue as to if you're   loading up your generator or your shore   power connection too much   and like i said a little bit earlier   before it's important to realize that   you can't do everything at once   otherwise the generator is going to be   size for peaks   and it's not good either for a generator   to be idling or to be underutilized most   of the time in the hopes of not worrying   about peaks   so you sort of always size a generator   shore power to be   especially generator to be what you   expect most of the time and then   the responsibilities to the boater to   manage their loads in this case ac loads   to make sure that you don't overload   a generator now i'm no mechanic but you   know we hear sayings right mechanics   will say you know generator is going to   like to run about    of capacity right that's i've heard    percent   um and the same thing with even a diesel   engine right diesel engines like to run   loaded   uh at about   percent more than they   would uh at lower rpms and less loaded   so yes roy's right uh and they're the   mechanic is right as well you don't want   to have all your ac loads running at the   same time and it's possible as you   overload the generator that you're going   to have an oil slick at the back   so yeah managing power is really   important great question from roy and   thanks for asking so if you're curious   again go on our website and find out   more answers and solutions with this   sort of setup and thanks for asking and   thanks for all of you for listening and   tuning in