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[Music] welcome everyone to how to a little series that were promoting and sharing our passion for boating with all of you here in the room with electrical systems so a little bit about myself first and foremost I am a boater it's Who I am its my DNA it's the one word that defines everything about me I would say it affects all parts of my life and what I'm here to share with you is sort of a little bit of my approach to boating which is trying to avoid surprises we talked a lot a little bit about that and reduce sort of the stress of boating by having a reliable reliable boat and one of those aspects is electrical there's a lot of different parts on a boat I've decided over time to try to be good at one of them which is electrical and electronic systems my background choose I'm in the business I'm fortunate enough to be invited and all of your boats and I'll talk a little bit about that later big deal is also doing things by the book you know it's important to not sort of have too much bravado or creativity on electrical systems you want a little bit but not too much I have a lot of boaters sometimes they come and look at the way I did it I'm like yeah it's great that you did this way but you know there's a normal way of doing it and everyone would have understood if we did the normal way right it's less surprising it's you know why make it complicated simple is always better for some of you that might be have subscriptions or I've read about our articles we write two columns every month one in Pacific yachting and one in Northwest yachting for those of you that don't have a subscription all those articles are actually published and available online for free on our website all as PDFs they go back for Pacific yachting I think it's almost nine years now and for Northwest yachting it's over a year so you even though you don't have a subscription and you want to geek out you'll be able to find all articles on all different topics and of course as an engineer I like lists and categories and formats so everything is categorized on my website so if you want to read about solar you go to page at solar and everything about solar is there and sure enough if you want to do it could be anything it could be batteries tons of articles just on batteries so you can find it sort of like an index or a table of contents you can find all that content I am a boater I mean I have to be it's like I said it's I I don't think I would be in this business and the ups and downs of everything related to boats if I didn't love them it's not always easy but it's extremely rewarding and as a boater here in the west coast of North America my favorite cruising grounds are the Brownton archipelago which is on the north end of ankov island pretty remote and also last summer we spent the majority of the summer in Berkeley Sound on the west coast of Vancouver Island so I like to sort of go further places where there's less support you're more on your own you don't always see a boat and again reliability of your systems are important the further you go afield from civilization the more you need to rely on yourself either understanding your systems right or troubleshooting them because you can't just call out someone the next thing just for you a little bit of a background that might not know a little bit about the company that I founded years ago is that we're we got good by basically repetition right specialization through repetition we do it over and over again so we only do a few things and those are marine electrical and electronics and today I'm going to be talking about electrical systems our service area in terms of actually doing work on boats and last year we did about a thousand build projects our in British Columbia mostly in Western Canada but mostly British Columbia so American owners or I've got boat owners from San Francisco Portland even Washington State if we end up doing work they come to British Columbia for that the other thing too that's interesting is that a big part of our business and that's actually where we're learning most of what I'm going to share with you today boaters are everywhere around the world and I would say between five to ten design engagements a week that we're doing these are boaters you know they could be summer in Guatemala Venezuela Abu Dhabi Singapore Hong Kong Kentucky Louisiana everywhere New Jersey you name it Idaho they're building a boat in their backyard they've got a sailboat they've got a houseboat they're building a trawler and they're saying Jeff I have all these ideas but I need somebody sort of helping me make sense of my choices and if I'm gonna do something and that's what we're gonna be talking about I want to do it well once right it's easy to scratch a line or erase the line on paper once you've built it on your boat and you've taken the time to run a line and electrical induce something and actually execute and then use someone else comes on board says you shouldn't have done that you will go through the well of despair first of all you're gonna fight that that's not a good idea then you're gonna come to the realization that yeah you shouldn't have done that and that's not going to be instantaneous right now you'd be like yeah I guess I have to redo it all and then you're going crap wouldn't have been easier to just erase on a piece of paper what was not a good idea and then built and I always tell remind people I mean how many great things in life have been built without a plan think about it all the highrise was built yeah we didn't have plans we just sort of we went through it and yeah look at it it worked most great things in life come with a plan and that's what we're gonna be talking about today is have a plan no matter how small the job how big the job is is way better to hash out the details and think about it at the beginning than to do it and then try to explain what you did to someone and then realize maybe you could have done it a different way that would have been much better now the other one last point I want to emphasize is that some of you have noticed we're filming this presentation we have over 165 YouTube videos on how to like this and there's about probably another 30 that are in the pipeline that have already been produced that are coming out so by the end of the year I will probably be at 225 YouTube videos again I'll categorize different topics you can find them on our website or on YouTube and that's a really another way for us to share our knowledge and our passion and even the comments I'm learning from comments I'm improving this presentation based on the questions I get on YouTube about things that were maybe misunderstood or that I didn't actually explain properly right it's again the community aspect of building so questions we've got some time so if you're feel free to raise your hand if it's a question that takes longer than a minute to ask then I would ask that we ask those questions at the end and maybe in the back if your question is you know 30 seconds 15 seconds then it's relatively gonna be a short answer if it's a two-minute question then it's probably gonna take so much time that it's gonna stop the flow of the presentation so think about your questions for the first part and if I'll be in the back as long as I need to at the end of these presentations if your question is a three-minute question I will listen intently I'll paraphrase make sure I got it right and I'll give you the best answer I can but just think about that when you're asking questions today throughout the presentations the other thing too is we're going to be posting all these slides on our web page on p/y systems dot forward slash media and so you'll be able to access the PDF of this presentation online later on make sure that when you're looking at these all conceptual diagrams that we're going to be sharing with you today these are conceptual diagrams meaning you can't build your boat from a conceptual diagram a conceptual diagram is more of a way for us to express ideas right to share concepts it goes obviously more in detail if you've seen the wiring diagram for your boat obviously the details are deeper and I try to include them in my presentations originally and most people are like what the hell am I looking at there's a thousand different things on that page I'm like oh yeah I get it I can time we're gonna be lost in the weeds we got a step go a little bit higher and so we're expressing concepts today on conceptual diagrams these conceptual diagrams are also available on the website you can download them and that's how you go about oh yeah so that's how a solar panel is connected well how's the battery combiner work how is the battery isolator work right and we're gonna be talking about that okay all right with that let's get it underway let's not get scared it's okay but this is what a boat electrical system looks like conceptually on the DC level that's what it looks like and our goal here today is to go through every one of those items specifically the ones on the left hand side of the slide and what we're going to be looking at is every single one of them and how they affect one another so we're gonna be talking about solar controllers alternators battery chargers methanol fuel cells we're going to talk about battery Isolators battery combiners and we'll even me to talk a little bit about DC generators and wind turbines so everything at first should be intimidating and it's okay you know if you want easy you're not gonna be doing voting so if we're here in the room as voters we know that easy is not voting isn't so we're willing to take on a challenge and you do it one bite at a time right and again with your electrical system on our boats it's not about understanding all of it it's understanding one part of it at a time and eventually it all makes sense or more sense as you get to know the system one important takeaway that I want to leave on this slide and I cannot emphasize this enough and we're going to be repeat these words all the time and ignore it your peril if you want a world of magic on your boat and you describe your term in magical terms for the electrical system it's because someone that did the work on your boat forgot or decided to ignore the difference between unsweet distribution and switch distribution unstitch distribution means a connection that is directly connected to the battery that is always there always on even when you turn the battery switch off those loads or charging circuits are always connected to the battery you can never disconnect those circuits from the battery with a battery switch that's why it's called an undisturbed right and the other side is switch distribution one other little takeaway electrical is a business of perfection if that's not if you know as a boater we need to say to ourselves I'm being asked to be perfect am I willing to take on the challenge and if not you should not do electrical electrical is not a place where you can have it 80% it 95% it 99 percent it it's a perfection business it's either do it alright or you haven't done it right it's period there is no room for error right and so as when we take on electrical work it's important to say I am being challenged here to do everything absolutely right every connection has to be done right the location of the connection has to be in the right place there is only one right answer okay and that's important to remember it's not like building a table if tables a little bit you know sort of crooked doesn't look great you know it still works electrical is not like that it's not like carpentry it can just it's not about looking great or not it's about it's got to be safe reliable right and that's very important ok so the other thing too that we're gonna I want to emphasize here is the AC system of electrical or marine electrical system pretty much looks like what we have here on the slide you're gonna have sources of AC coming on board right on the left-hand side you have Shore power and you have a generator these are pretty much the only two sources of AC on a boat you can have multiple generators you know we get invited to work on 100 footers 120 footers 150 footers they might have three generators you know port starboard a night gem you know a lot of north ovens you know 75 they might have a big jam a small jam you know Bay jam night jam it doesn't matter how many generators you have how many short power receptacles you have you might have shore power or receptacle up front in the aft you might have two up front two and a half a Bayliner 47 88 has 3 AC inputs right line 1 line 2 line 3 doesn't matter there's just more sources running the panel it looks intimidating but actually AC on a boat is pretty simple there's not a lot of magic with AC because generally nobody in their right mind would work on AC if they didn't know what they were doing from a matter of safety that's a place where you really do not want to take any chances so you basically have multiple sources and then you end up having a source selector you need to decide what's going to run the boat it's going to be the generator or Shore power and that feeds a panel and then in turn from the panel you might have what are called inverter loads now you might not have to AC panels on your boat but in the back it's wired like it's two different panels okay so when you have an inverter on board most installs are gonna have a basically a sub panel for inverter loads not all remember there's no sort of one way only way with memory and electrical there's a lot of differences right in possibilities but I'd say 95% are gonna have sort of non inverter loads not inverter loads would be like a hot water heater a battery charge you wouldn't want to run a battery charger from your inverter right an inverter takes power from the batteries you want to want to bat charge your batteries from your batteries it's the opposite of Aliano da Vinci infinity machine it's just not gonna work and I've seen that a lot people are literally go cruising and they're like my batteries are dying all the time I've got weak batteries and sure enough it's because their inverter is powering their battery charger and while they were under way they're like I want my battery charger on oh I don't have AC I'll make an inverter on and they're not understanding and I never laugh I'm like yeah it makes confusing somebody wired it badly so you made that error it's not that your batteries are a problem is that you're charging your batteries from your batteries and basically that's it AC systems are pretty straightforward it doesn't matter if it's a 70-footer or a 30-footer they pretty much are just more of the same we'll talk a little bit about AC so next what we're gonna get into is when you're thinking about doing an electrical system or improving on your electrical system because most of us are not doing a complete refit of our electrical we're saying I'm going to tackle a part of the electrical there's some things that are good on my boat and there's some things are not so good on my boat and you're gonna say okay I'm gonna be in doing improvements or changes or a whole overall change you got to start thinking about requirements and these are the things that you need to hash out before you go down the path right generally you've got to think about what are all the different things you're gonna run on your boat don't do the electrical system and then start adding like oh yeah I'm gonna I've decided now two years in I'm going to add a windlass I've decided now that I'm gonna do an inverter oh I'm gonna decide that you know I'm not gonna stay overnight one night I'm gonna stay overnight three nights all these things need to be hashed out at the beginning if you're building a house how many rooms you're gonna have in that house have to be figured out at the that you can tell the builder a while underway like oh yeah I didn't think about my daughter's room can we add that oh yeah we're doing a bottom you know a basement suite can we add that all those discussions in your mind have to happen at the beginning so start dreaming you know where's my boat going to be in five years two years and so figure out all of your AC and DC loads the other thing that's really important it's figuring out how much power you're going to need a day it's important to if you're planning to retire and you're gonna say how much money do I need in the bank to retire one of the other variables you need to ask yourself is what my burn rate how much money do I need a year will influence how many much money you need in the bank to retire and sizing a battery bank is directly correlated to how many amp hours you use every day on your boat it's got to be otherwise world of surprises and disappointments you might buy too many batteries or too little the other variable that's really important is how frequently will you have an opportunity to recharge your batteries and I can't say that enough some boaters have a generator on board and they run that generator morning and night some boaters actually believe or not run their generator 24/7 I had a boater that had a 36 footer and he was okay running his generator 24/7 you know it didn't bother him he doesn't have battery problems does it not have battery problems the generators running all the time running a battery charger he doesn't need really I mean he has batteries but he could have one right the generationally running now that's one end of the spectrum another end of the spectrum is potentially a sail border that wants to stay on the hook for two weeks and without running the generator or charger ie a generator or even the alternator how are you going to do that are you gonna have solar to recharge the batteries or you're gonna have a wind turbine how are you gonna recharge the batteries to stay on the hook for a week two weeks or three days right and the other thing to consider is well how many battery banks am I gonna have on the boat you know some boaters you know you might have a 20-foot boat it's 15 foot boat they have one battery one engine you know the downrigger the chartplotter is just running it for example imagine a tender 15-foot tender a rib one battery on board starts the engine also runs maybe a simple VHF that's as simple as it gets a single battery you might have a boat and you're saying well actually a little bit of division of labor a battery for the engine a battery for the house oh I have two engines a battery for port engine a battery for starboard engine oh I've got a generator generator battery oh I actually have thrusters I have forward and aft battery for four thruster battery for a thruster you know I'm having a windlass and my windlass is obviously at the bow and my house battery banks are way at the aft I'm gonna have a windlass battery right some voters have inverter only battery banks the most amount of battery banks I've seen on a boat so far is six but that's something you've got to think about how many different battery banks are you gonna have there's definitely such a thing as too many but you want to have as little as possible within reason right one is probably always too little and then you got to do not more than you need and you sort of like are pushing and pulling against yourself right I need no more than I want and I need no little than I want so you got to find that magic number of battery bags that you're gonna have in your boat so with that oh yeah and one two last points again if you're a totally completely new boat you might decide am I gonna go with 24 volt boat or am I gonna do 12 right big implication on there you're seeing more and more 24 volt boats right now especially above 50 feet and then is the boat coming from Europe is it a 220 bow to 120 boat are you gonna have to 20 loads coming in are you gonna be an a big AC user boat or you're gonna have air conditioning onboard right you can't run air conditioning on just and run your boat just on a simple 30 amp 120 you might need a 50 amp 220 so all these things you still need to think about at the beginning always create a plan and think where you're gonna go before you start your journey super important okay alright so with that we're gonna start with batteries there's a lot of choice with batteries I mean that's the good thing and that's also the bad thing right it's a little bit overwhelming you go into marine battery store and you're like I want a marine battery they're like okay well let's start the journey and that's where we're gonna talk a little about about the journey of choosing the right hurry for your boat there's no such thing as a perfect battery for everyone there isn't if there was it'd be easy I shall one slide we're like done battery check box here's you know the Silver Bullet and we move on it unfortunately like with mold things on a boat and I remember I remember guard --less of money you have a billion dollars you spend it on a boat at the end of the day you're making a not a thousand you're making a hundred thousand decisions that are compromises I want a bigger boat you're gonna have this and that you're constantly moving these levers that effect something else right and so money doesn't even solve all problems sizes and solve all problems all about compromises you could have a 30-footer 100 foot or a 50 footer it doesn't matter you're constantly choosing so batteries is one of those things you have to choose as a motor most of us as a boater will end up choosing pretty much with what's called our flooded lead-acid batteries or sealed lead-acid batteries seal valve let acid batteries those are AGMs absorbed glass mat or gels flooded lead-acid batteries or the batteries that we all had in our cars 20 years ago right they had electrolyte you know there was battery acid in them it was in a flooded state liquid state we're seeing more and more seal valve regulated batteries on boat nowadays right and those are AGM and also Firefly batteries and another word that's commonly used and we're seeing that a little bit more and more it's coming out more and more every year as well our lithium batteries lithium phosphate iron batteries again don't get caught up and oh I need an AGM because my neighbor has one no not that easy there's a lot of choice and we're going to talk a little bit I'm here next slide is going to show you some of the differentiators between elana acid batteries remember AGM is a lead acid battery gel is a lead acid battery flood is an acid is a lead acid battery so there's three big choices with lead acid batteries we're gonna focus on the next slide between Firefly AGM AGM and flooded one of the first differentiators is cost don't kid yourself the least expensive battery not the best value battery but if cost is king and that's the only thing you care about you want the least-expensive battery you're gonna go for a flood of the acid battery no doubt this is going to be the lowest number on the battery no doubt now if it was that easy you can buy things just strictly based on cost we've probably all you being fast food every day and nobody would ever worry about organic or anything else it'd be fast food all the way the only way but low-cost is not necessarily best value there's generally something in the between from a low cost and so you can see the differences in dollar signs these are sort of trying to represent the cost a Firefly battery is going to be probably three times more money than a good quality flooded lead-acid battery so why would you do that why would you spend three times the price well it's in sort of the benefits that you get as a boater one of them is life cycles right and I'm actually next I'm going to talk about cycle I should talk about battery life battery life is basically 4 X 5 X so if you're buying a battery and you're changing your batteries every 3 to 5 years your Firefly batteries are gonna last 4 times that long at 50% depth of discharge a Firefly battery is 3,600 cycles and flooded battery is 300 cycles that's 12x again the math but if you go all the way down to 20% of capacity a Firefly battery is 1200 cycles and a flooded battery at 50% has 300 so your training you're saying you know what I I'm buying batteries but I don't want to do this again this is the last time I want to buy batteries that's where you would end up doing Firefly batteries the other thing a big takeaway between AGM and flooded is you have more usable battery capacity and this is important because what you see is not what you get with a battery a 200 amp hour battery is not 200 amp hours of usable battery capacity you can do it but you're gonna have a very short battery life I have very stubborn clients and we see them every couple years they refuse to ignore my advice about not discharging their batteries to 50% on flooded and unfortunately tell them we're I mean I I don't mind seeing you that often it's fun it's good for the business but isn't it frustrating and change your batteries every couple years when you could be changing them every 5-10 years if you actually maintain them properly and you didn't work them so hard so the depth of discharge of that battery is really important you don't want to go too deep on the discharge okay and the other thing too that's really a big takeaway especially with Firefly is that they can live in a partial state of discharge without affecting battery capacity what does that what does that mean it means that it prevents premature aging Firefly batteries and they're perfect example so for cruisers people that are going away from arena for a long period of time they're off the dock for two months three months or they're going offshore if you're a boating and you're not answering our docking every night and you're off the grid for two months three months a year you're going off grid you want a battery that will not sulfate prematurely that can stay always between 50 and 80% and never get to 100% charge and the way that you do that the way that you do that is having a battery that is tolerant to a partial state of discharge and that's why some boaters will choose if it makes sense for them will choose your Firefly battery even though it might be 3/4 times the price of a flooded battery because they know that they're living in that partial state of discharge all the time here are some examples of some battery banks installed on boats and I have a full one-hour presentation just on batteries and we also do a course on marine electrical system and then it's a two-hour presentation is just on batteries and I could do eight hours I could do 12 but people will be running for the exits we'd have to lock the doors so if you're going to be installing a battery bank on your boat here are some tips you want the battery bank to be in one physical location now I'm not saying all battery banks in one location you want if you have house batteries and you have four house batteries you don't want to on the port two on the starboard your battery bank for your house has to be in one location and again today people sometimes say say Jeff why if we did the Y on everything we would be here for a hundred hours the Y is the longest the what is easy the why is I'll tell wise as long as you want me to do but again I'll do that in private in the back and I can explain you all the whys these are just the what's really important that you also fuse all non starter loads to a battery bank that is a black and white I can tell you every single one of you unless it's a brand new boat untouched if it's a factory boat this rule is followed every boat from a factory is going to follow this row rule the moment your boat leaves the factory and you invite someone on your boat or a previous owner wired your boat I can guarantee you that 99.999% of you have circuits that are unfused guaranteed because it's path of least resistance you don't need a fuse until you need one the circuit works it's like a seat belt you've never used your seat belt of lists you've been in an accident you just don't need one until you do so it works without a fuse and that's the thing a fuse is not critical for it to work it's critical for you to protect your circuit in the event of a short or over current situation that could happen okay next we're going to talk a little bit about power jolt yes question yeah go ahead a really good question the question but one of the attendees was when I'm installing a battery bank should the battery bank be of all the same uniformity they should be all the same and absolutely black and white you cannot and this is this is one of the main reasons that you need to evenly maintain your battery banks it's a little bit of like tires in a car you can have tires that are four or five years old you lose one and you just change the tire you kind of have a brand new tire with three old tires if you change the battery midstream or even new batteries they all have to be the same they have to all start the same brand new batteries all go together if you have a GM they all have to be a GM everything has to be the same you can't you can't miss golf cart batteries with group thirty-one batteries with an 8 D battery no mismatch you can do it but then also don't ask yourself why you were unlucky that you're changing your batteries frequently you're into a world of hurt shortcuts rarely pan out in life rarely pan out we're looking for them all the time but you don't want to do a shortcut that has been proven to not work so you always want to have battery banks that are the same age right the same type same chemistry and if one battery bank fails our battery fails out of a battery bank four years from now you change the whole bank another question of her most pictures of wiring installations with large bundles drastically the question from the gentleman in front is when you have large bundles of wiring does that cut your ampacity and the answer is yes and the reason it's because of heat bundles of wiring the ideal and we can't do this on our boats you can do them ferries and ships you'll see if you're ever on a ferry or ship you look up there's actually wine trace the wires are sort of mismatched going in the tray that's really good for heat dissipation you keep everything together bundle that's how you get warm outside your cold hug someone and how you put a bundle and you keep everything and then they're actually in the ABY see they'll have charts they're like how many wires are bundled together in a boat the challenge is it looks neat and we want things to look good but if you've got a really big bundle that's gonna actually de-rate your cable for ampacity so that means you need a larger cable when it goes in a bundle and there are tables that actually specify that so a good question another question up front yes sir is the term Firefly is that a brand of battery or a night good question it's Firefly a type of battery or a brand Firefly is a brand that is also a type meaning it's a foam core based AGM they have a patent it was invented for Caterpillar and that battery now is they're the only ones that do that so they sort of have because they have the patent yes it's a brand name but it also happens to be the only one that can do that battery it was an american-made product the inventor actually lives on the east coast of the United States in Maine amazingly smart man amazingly smart game changer by the way huge game changer yes gentlemen question over here and the host batteries are already separated starboard port and extra battery in this case is even separated remotely can you still have to use the rule of everything going positive and everything negative coming from so the the question by the gentleman is I we have a boat situation happens by the way boats aren't perfect if they were none of us would be looking at making our boats better or fixing them right I mean that's what brought me to this business a boat has multiple battery banks connected together like our multiple batteries connected in one bank one a port side one on starboard side and even a third one in another location first of all as we know the rule is you shouldn't have that but that's what you have and you decide to live with it your choice should the positive and negative be at opposite ends should you try to act like the battery was in one location and it isn't and have the positive in one end of the battery bank and the negative at the other and the answer is at 8 yes absolutely again I can't tell you the why because we'd be here for days I have lots of stamina I'm a business owner lots of stamina but we're not gonna go but the answer is yes you have to have it at the opposite ends now you remember here's another little takeaway as a boater the good news is you can do whatever you want in North America on your boat and the bad news is you can do whatever you want on a boat honestly that's why I'm in this business I thought a boat was like a car there's only one right way that was the manufacturers way and if you bought a Toyota you know you sort of got that Toyota way and that's what you're buying when you buy a boat the moment it leaves a factory the world of creativity and macgyverism happens people take shortcuts and they do not know the shortcuts implications and that's good news or bad news somebody was really happy that they were able to take a shortcut and nobody's there's no standards police on land it would be criminal somebody if somebody dies because you've missed wiring a house they're coming after you there is no end on a boat a it was sort of your way and that's the good news and the bad news it's good news for the MacGyver's out there and it's bad news for people that sort of like safety I'm mr. safety i boat for pleasure i don't want to have my book catch on fire i don't want to have a boat that's unreliable i want a boat that's predictable i like it sort of the way there should be so good news or bad news depending on your perspective all right with that we're gonna start on power generation so power generation is I mean batteries are one thing but remember batteries are just as wait for you to store power right that's it so how do you go about charging batteries through alternators solar methanol fuel cells so we're going to go through a little bit of that so on the diagram all battery chargers now an inverter it can be two things remember an inverter can be an inverter charger or an inverter if it's an inverter only it's not a charging source it can go to the switch distribution because it's a load right but remember a lot of us the majority of us on boats have inverter chargers those are sort of weird devices it's a load but it's also a charger and if you have an inverter charger that inverter charger has to be connected to the unsweet distribution via its own switch and we'll talk about that on the slide here I'm showing an inverter as a load only and if it's an inverter only device that device is on the switch distribution again ignore at your peril ignore it your peril electrical is blamed all the time I read you know books from the 70s and 80s and they talked about how electrical is magical and who's reliable unreliable frustrating blaming a wire think about it it's an inanimate object has no intelligence it simply was installed by a person and we blame electrical for being unreliable there is nothing more beautiful and simple and predictable than electrical it's not that this the wires are electrical is unpredictable is the person that did it didn't know what they were doing right people make mistakes it happens electrical is not unreliable people installing electrical systems make mistakes and those mistakes are never identified and become very frustrating paying points and we blame electrical systems but we should blame the Installer electrical one is done right it works flawlessly absolutely flawlessly so here I want to emphasize and especially if you have a boat that has over the ages has improved or changed especially if the battery bank with this gentleman had more batteries than probably the Builder I put in you want to make sure that your charge rate on your battery charger is at least 10% of your deep-cycle battery bank size every boat builder that I've ever been I've ever seen been on because again I get invited thank you on literally we get to work on a thousand boats a year I don't get to see a thousand boats a year but I get to see hundreds I've never seen a brand-new boat that does not have a battery charger that is ten percent of the battery bank size every single designer of electrical system and every manufacturer does this rule the problem is that as boaters we end up at buying more batteries on our boat we often too often forget to increase the battery charger size thinking hoping that the designer size a battery charger for all possible permutations of your battery bank in the foreseeable future no one does that I tell this all the time with you employees there is no hope I want it to know I want you to confirm it I want you to check it oh I think don't think tell me is that battery charger size to handle this battery bank size over if you have a not brand new boat ninety percent of you have battery chargers that are too small and a direct consequence of that is that your battery banks are dying or aging prematurely and you're losing your battery banks too soon because your battery charger is not 10 percent of your battery bank size so if you value money and your time make sure your battery charger is at least 10 percent of your battery bank size so for example if you have for golf cart batteries wiring a 12-volt battery bank let's call it 400 amp hours marketing would tell you 460 and you know they're gonna make the numbers as stretch as humanly possible but let's call it 400 you need a 40 amp charger on a 400 amp hour battery bank that's what it is it doesn't so much effect engine batteries because engine batteries are not brought to a deep-cycle level right there's a big difference between starter batteries and deep cycle batteries if you're curious again you can see bunch of youtube videos just on that topic now there's also an upper end limit you can't charge a battery as fast as you want regardless right so AGM is theoretically around 40 flooded theoretically around 25 lithium theoretically 300 percent so that means if you have a 400 amp hour battery bank you could theoretically charge that battery bank at 1200 amps sounds great but I like I can guarantee you that you cannot go to a chandlery and say by the way I'm looking for a 1200 amp charger it's not gonna happen it's not gonna happen there is no such thing as a 1200 amp charger the largest battery charger on the market is a hundred amp 24 volt charger that's it so looking for a 1200 amp charger is you're gonna start looking for a long time and not on the internet either can it doesn't happen so you want to have a battery charger that's not too big not too small and you want to be realistic with your expectations so generally we size battery chargers a little bit bigger and we try to give them about 20% of capacity as a way to reduce charge time and that's really important if you have a generator now again some owners don't care about running their generators all the time so for them it doesn't matter but if you for whatever reason and there might be a few good reasons that I can think of not running your generator you know 24 hours a day and you don't want to run at 8 hours a day or 10 hours a day and you only want to run 2 hours or 4 hours then increase your charger size not size but add multiple chargers I have some boats we have we had a 24 volt boat we have 350 amps at 24 volts by adding multiple Chargers on the bulkhead you can stack or daisy chain chargers okay this is what basically a charger layout looks like now I can't emphasize this enough a battery charger is powered by AC your engine even a generator when the generator is running it creates and especially if you have an AC generator creates a C and then AC powers of charger Chargers used to be called converters that's the word that we would use the opposite of an inverter right inverter converter they sound opposite similar but opposite that word died unfortunately because converters were we didn't understand what was going on in battery we were overcharging them so nobody uses the word converter anymore you can't buy a converter you just can't you buy battery chargers now battery chargers are bulk absorption float three-stage now they even have a fourth stage but at the end of the day a battery charger is powered by AC so it's either when you connect it to shore power or you have an AC generator running and then you power send a seeds of the device the device takes that AC converts it and through a three-phase smart charging curve recharges your battery when your engine is running an engine propulsion engine is running there is no propulsion engine that is running that creates AC to run a battery charger a lot of people think and I give this all the time they're like Jeff do I need my battery charger on when I'm running my engine I'm like they're unrelated they're not they're not at all your alternator is running or turning and creating DC power when you're underway or at idle depending but not a battery charger so to recap you want at least 10% of a battery back one second at least 10% of your battery bank deep cycle size as a charge rate I can't emphasize this enough practically 95% of you have a battery charger with no fusing on it again you don't need a seat belt to drive your car besides the law and your conscience you do not need a seat belt your car will work without a seat belt unfortunately when you need a seat belt that you're not buckled in it's gonna be a life experience it's gonna be a very memorable moment unforgettable actually and if you have a dead short on any wire size on your boat it will may be your last day on the water if you make it out of your boat it will change your life so fusing battery charger leads is absolutely essential and they're pointing that emphasizing here which is again really important a Chargers need to be directly connected to the unstretched distribution meaning when you turn your battery switch off your charger is still connected to your batteries right that is the rule absolutely now it happens to be honest happens off too often that the battery charger is connected to the switch on side of your switch meaning when you turn that battery switch off your charger is disconnected from your batteries can't have that a lot of good reasons worlds of magic if that happens all right here's a little bit of slide of an inverter the inverter is the great of ice in the middle what is an inverter an inverter is a device that creates AC from DC right the opposite of a converter and why would you have an inverter on your boat you'd have an inverter on your boat if you want to have the benefits of running household appliances on your boat when you don't have a generator or you're not gonna have a connected to shore power for example on my boat I run a coffee machine an espresso from my batteries through an inverter I love coffee it's one of the pleasures of my life I have an espresso machine machine and even if we're in an anchorage in the middle of nowhere I'll turn the inverter on and - presto machine is going to take AC power from the inverter and the inverter takes DC power from the battery bank could be running a microwave it could be running a TV alright there's a bunch of what are called non inverter loads non inverter loads are a hot water tank AC hot water tank is not something you want to run off your inverter you can but your battery was gonna be dead in 20 minutes rights are big big loads should not be running off an inverter like air conditioning you know could be run but then you're got a big big battery bang you're gonna have a lithium battery bank you need a big big electrical system to run large AC loads on your boat there's no end of course you can run a city off an inverter there's inverters the size almost of this room right but again the problem is on our boats we're taking power from our batteries and our batteries are limited there's no such thing or very early too big a battery bank we're limited by space and weight and our budgets you know otherwise we'd have bigger battery banks if we could it's like a little bit like money very few of us ever have the luxury of saying I have too much money it's very rare I don't think I've ever met an order said Jeff you know what I've got too much battery banks oh yeah you know I wish I didn't have as many it's it's a hassle to not worry about power I've never heard those words never it's never happened you always wish you had a little bit more or you're happy with you have but too much power no inverters are the number one device that is installed unsafely on pretty much all of our boats and it comes down to unfortunately the manual is almost I mean the manuals almost a centimeter thick it's about 70 100 pages and unfortunately most men install inverters unfortunately women install inverters they'd probably be done right and most men you know what they're born with knowledge they don't need to read a manual manuals are stupid they're for other people and the other bad news is when you buy an inverter you're not actually buying all the pieces that are required to install an inverter you're just buying one part of the inverter system so there's no switch there's no fuse there's no wiring and you can get away with getting an inverter to work without actually wiring it properly less than 1% of boats have inverters put wire properly and the reason is most factories don't install inverters if a factory installed an inverter I can tell you there'd be an engineer they're going nuts and a lawyer and the office is going you're crazy we'll lose our name will be sued we'll lose everything we have if we have a boat fire because we badly installed an inverter they would never do it they have either a conscience or they love their money too much to not care but the problem is is most inverters are done 99% are done after factory and then welcome to the world of get it done make someone happy please someone do it in as little time as humanly possible and say you know why would an inverter take 2-3 days to install I install mine in four and four hours you're not doing an apples-to-apples comparison one person took a bunch of shortcuts and the other person did it right so if you're looking and you have an inverter on your boat make sure all these items are on your boat you need a class T fuse you absolutely need a service disconnect you need an inverter only neutral bus proper size ground chassis wire the location of the inverter cannot be in a in a gasoline engine room and the inverter cannot be 30 feet away from your batteries when I find an inverter properly installed no matter how inappropriate it is I ask the owner if we can high-five I'm like this is a special moment you have a properly installed inverter let's celebrate that's how rare it is I'll see it properly installed inverter maybe once a year once a year that's how the manual is just simply too thick you can't read that it's a hundred pages why would you do that question anybody on inverters all right next thing we're gonna be talking about is alternators if you look on the slide here on the left-hand slide pretty much every single boat that comes out of the factory and this is 99.999 unless you might have a north oven maybe a Fleming maybe a Saline you know maybe all boats are wired like on the left-hand side meaning this alternator is directly wired the output the positive output from your alternator is daisy chained to the starter solenoid post on your starter it's a short little wire it's gonna be I don't care how big your engine your mention could be bigger than I am like wider like eight feet long 10 feet long the alternator is going to be slightly forward of this starter you're gonna have maybe a four feet five feet piece of wire on my boat my engine is only this big the wires are both this long and from the positive posts of the alternator to the starter so little solenoid post what that means is that if you ever turn your battery switch off and every single battery switch on every single boat has a tiny little label at the bottom and I learned this the hard way because I had lots of bravado when I bought my boat lots of bravado I was not humbled yet I've been humbled if you saw the scars on my body from doing things the wrong way I'd be disfigured I learned the hard way and I remember I was an engineer right out of school 2006 lots of bravado the alternator doesn't seem to be working I'm like I got this must be the switch I don't know what the hell I'm doing I'm like maybe the switch is faulty turn the switch on turn the switch by the switch was on turn it off turn it on again I can guarantee you that if I had if I had an alternator or not problem before I created an alternator problem literally at the bottom of the switch and small fine print is never turn battery switch off when engine is running every single switch on every single boat has that because the alternator cannot be disconnected when the engine is running and if you do so you blow up your alternator so I blew up my alternator two weeks after buying my this is sort of the genesis of being here I felt so stupid and I was like no this is no I'm not gonna you bravado my way into all of this I got to start educating that's why I start with forums books Don Casey I had a boner history saying Jeff I want to educate myself and Nigel Calder you know all these sort of famous authors there's tons of forums I mean as a board if you're curious it's a huge tap of information out there right be curious and that's why with an alternator after that problem I went again reading Nigel Calder who's presenting in the room a little down the road just on the few stages down the way over there I decided okay I'm gonna do it the right way I'm gonna run a large wire directly to my house battery bank I'm not gonna have it switched anymore I'm gonna have it fused but not switched I'm gonna make it foolproof me being the fool right so I basically said I don't want to make that error ever again again so I wired the alternator directly to the house battery make sure and I and you remember when we talked about battery chargers not increasing with the battery bank size over time that happens to with alternators we end up putting larger and larger battery banks on our boat but the alternator doesn't increase in size with it right I go on boats let's say for example grand banks 42 had you know one ad well port and starboard ad 55 stack stock alternator remember 55 to 20 to 40 that's almost a 25% ratio right so the alternator is perfectly sized for that battery bank no problem and then later down the road that boat now doesn't only have one ad or a 240 a power battery bank it has three more of them right so now you have an 800 900 amp hour battery bank that is charged by a fifty five amp alternator and then I get a call from the order it's like it's taking forever I'm doing eight hours of motoring a day my battery bank still doesn't get charged I'm like it's not the motor the problem is that your alternator is too small for your battery bank size remember a battery bank is like a big wallet our large bank account our huge safe it's one thing to have a big safe but putting money into it is the hard part right earning is hard storing it is one thing earning energy and being able to size it size an alternator size a charger so that you can recharge your battery bank at the right rate of charge is very important and often overlooked question gentlemen question is we have or someone has a used boat and I'm wondering what size alternator is it you'll be able to see a little nameplate it's about maybe about this big sort of like on top of the alternator you know following the curve of the alternator a little nameplate hopefully it's not been worn and you'll be able to see the size of the alter it's gonna generally say you know 75 55 90-120 some alternators are like 260 amps 300 amps on large engines but generally the stock alternates 55 amps alright with that we're gonna start the next thing we're to talk about is solar when you do a solar battery the old gentleman here question 20 engine my start barely four alternators wind sighs can I change the upgrade because my house batteries are bigger bigger load so later on each engine yeah okay that's a good question yeah so if you've got a boat two engines which is not uncommon for a lot of power builders or catamaran right power or sail and I've got one alternating let's say connected to a starter battery and I have another alternator connected to my house battery should I consider changing which alternator I'm gonna make it mill a bit more open which alternator should I consider changing first I would change the one connected to my house battery right because that's the one that needs the most think about your you know that the house battery bank is generally the largest battery bank you know you could have it doesn't matter how big your boat is it's generally gonna be in multiples of you know your house battery bank might be a hundred amp hours but obviously they're measuring in cold cranking amps but generally it's gonna be maybe five X 10 X you know I have some boats that have ten more house batteries they need do engine batteries in size and so if you've got you know a really large house battery bank the first alternator you should think about changing is the house one and most of the time the the alternator for your engine battery is perfectly fine as long as you're not running too many large loads on your engine battery while under way I had a boater brand new boat 52 footer the engine room got too hot they would run these huge fans in the engine room to cool down the engine room underway massive fans like I'm talking like huge while underway their alternator was so small that after four hours of leaving the marina their engines would die because their alternator output could not meet the demand of running those fans and the engine would die because it was an electronic engine so there's no power to the digital control module control module dies engine dies the owner had to run his generator to run battery chargers to power the fans to run his engine no joke brand-new about two million dollars yeah got missed hey if it was easy I don't even laugh if it was easy we would not all be here in their room learning about it right something easy it's done so I go back and I'm like yeah it's it's a big puzzle you know I don't laugh anymore I'm like yeah it's not easy that's why it's interesting if it was easy I wouldn't be doing it Solar so it's solar basically what you've got is you've got a solar panel connected to a controller so this is really essential and I can't emphasize this enough you cannot have a solar panel directly connected to a battery bank your battery banks might be completely charged you're connected to shore power I had that question asked last night on YouTube I have a large solar panel and is it going to be okay to have a battery charger connected to a battery bank with a solar panel connected to a controller at the same time meaning I'm connected to shore power I have a battery charger turned on the sun is shining now I have two sources of power coming to one battery am I going to be okay and because both a battery charger and a solar controller are voltage regulated through a three-phase smart charging profile right bulk absorption float yes you can have two charging devices at the same time today like on my boat I have six solar panels six controllers and I can be connected to shore power seven charging sources of power all at the same time and won't overcharge it because all of them are being smart they're like do I need to help no I won't do anything they'll back off what I'm emphasizing on the left part of this slide here is I'm talking about a dedicated panel dedicated controller and there's a reason you might do this for reasons of shading right like if you're a sailboat or a power boarder and you have a huge arch and you've got lots of things above your solar panels and your panels might experience shading your sailboat or you have solar panels for example on your dogger you have a boo you know part of the day one panel is going to be shaded part of the other day the other panel is going to be shaded assuming you're not moving and then only when the Sun is directly overhead you might have sun shining perfectly on both panels without chaining well when that happens you know when we install solar panels on Dodgers we end up doing a dedicated controller per panel right so that each panel is perfectly tuned for the sunlight conditions that it's experiencing at that given moment I had another client again last night on YouTube asked me another question they're like I'm putting three solar panels but I've got a huge Bimini and I do not have any shading can do should I wire dedicated controllers or sure can I wire them in series I'm like besides redundancy which would be a good reason to do dedicate controllers per panel you can wire your three solar panels in series which is what I'm showing on the right-hand side here we've only have two to a single controller so I generally will wire panels in series if the panel's I might do let's say one side of a Bimini right on a Bimini I might have a lot of solar panels I might have two or three on one side of the Bimini if they're all the same type same size I might wire them in series and then have some on the port side so I'm on the starboard side wires in series again there's no easy answer you got to think about it pros and cons but you do not want to have a panel that's on the port that's going to experience different shading conditions than one on starboard and then have them connected in series or especially in parallel question the question is if you have multiple solar controllers connected to obviously multiple solar panels do you need to have an independent battery path an independent path to the battery bank the answer is no you can aggregate like on my boat I have Sora for solar controllers at the back of my boat and I aggregate the four larger wire fused going to the battery bank so you can start aggregating when you think about electrical often we're gonna hear words like trunk lines branch circuits think about electrical as a tree right that's why they call them a trunk and a branch circuit so eventually you start aggregating things because you do not want to have 30 circuits or 40 circuits on a battery right it has to be modular you've got a large wire leaving going to positive distribution negative distribution then those go out fan out the sub distribution they go to panels and it's like a tree there's only ever one path back to the ground with a tree right so you never want to have loops you don't wanna have parallel paths ever right you only ever want to have one path from an end appliance imagine a leaf alight and there's only one path that will go to the ground only one path there multiple circuits but there's only ever one path back to the ground yes question to use the battery connector from yeah the question was do you have a fuse on a from a solar panel to a controller for example or to a battery yes all this is a black and white rule this is truly black and white all non starter circuits have to be fused including solar panels and you'll notice on the slide there's a little wiggly line looks like sort of a long ass that is the fuse connected to the battery so the solar controller has a fuse the positive connection to the battery has to be fused has to be black and white that's the code now again scary part how many of us have unfused circuits in our boats too many too many of us because it works without a fuse until you need a fuse gentleman in the back question yeah so the question is can win generates interfere with solar generally there are controllers that exist that control both or convert solar and wind generators so they won't interfere you can have a controller just for your wind generator a controller just for your solar personally I like division you know I'm an engineer I like sort of not having all my eggs in one basket if you're putting a wind turbine on your boat you're probably thinking that you're not going to be connecting to shore power too often and if you have solar on top of it you're really thinking you need to be off-grid to put both of those devices in one device if you lose it and you're in the middle of nowhere you're toast I mean you're you're far away right most people that end up having wind turbines and solar are really off shore cruisers there are people that are going often beyond if you're doing that I personally would rather have dedicated devices per dedicated source of income rather than having one that's common and you lose that you lose both question these things is there any disadvantage the inline fuses as opposed to in account the question is there any different disadvantages with an inline fuse versus a circuit breaker at a panel no there isn't I do an inline fuses on solar panels all the time all the time and remember I can bring a solar panel it's a good quiz question here I can't bring a solar panel to a panel a solar panel to a DC panel panel to panel why because the DC panel is switched and remember solar panels have to be unswept you can never ever ever bring a solar panel controller connection to a DC panel ever why because that is an unsuspecting all charging circuits alternators battery chargers solar wind turbines have to be connected to the unsweet distribution I know your panel is closer you're like so easy it's right there can I take a shortcut think about it does Jeff like shortcuts do you want it easy or you want it done right Easy's not a place on a boat you want easy don't go boating there is nothing easy about boating there isn't nothing easy net always do it right always do it right so a question about sizing solar panels if you've got solar panels on your boat and you're you're wondering right Jeff I had that yesterday I did a presentation on solar Jeff how do I figure out how many solar panels I need well there's a really good simple rule here in the Pacific Northwest if you've got a 100 watt solar panel how much power is it gonna output and yes there's a typo in this slide 100 times 25 percent is 25 amp hours right so if you for example have a 200 watt solar array 25 percent of 200 watt is 15 amp hours the other way of looking at is saying Jeff I have a hundred amp hour battery a half hour battery budget on my boat I want my solar panel staffs at all my loads I'm going off in this summer I'm not plugging in I have boaters that like for example I had a Grand Banks 36 a few years ago they said Jeff we don't want to buy a generator on our boat we're going to an outstation it does not have power we want to stay at the dock for a week a week to two weeks I don't want a generator I don't want to run my engine to create power to recharge my batteries I want you to create a solar array that will allow me to stay at the dock pretty much without power indefinitely sounds crazy not crazy at all no problem we ended up putting a 450 waterway there daily power consumption was about a hundred so we oversize it slightly and they have a 450 waterway on a Grand Banks 36 right on the Bimini and now when they go at that out station without power they're literally running the fridge running their lights running the water pump all from power that was created storing the batteries and even the batteries are running the boat overnight and in the daytime the Sun starts even if it's slightly cloudy creates power recharges the battery and then the cycle repeats I did it on my boat in this summer on my boat I can be completely disconnected I don't need an alternator I don't need a battery charger from May to September I have more power than I need on my boat it's doable I do it all the time I did a lagoon 55 do it all the time now it takes a little bit of stomach to go through the purchasing of the solar panels I mean that's not easy but once you're over that hump and I did my boat about eight years ago it's done it's over I'm completely neutral I don't worry about power ever in the summer now in the winter time that's a different story in the winter time the Sun here in the Pacific Northwest is not shining 16 hours a day yeah solar in the winter time is not it's not as good you went on some you lose on others so if you're going to be doing a solar remember when you're choosing your controller think about our men connect into a 24 volt battery bank or 12 volt battery bank because controllers are actually designed specifically for what battery bank they're going to be connecting to not many of us have 24 but if you've got a bigger boat you know in the 50s or something and you're doing solar you're going to want to think about what size battery back we're connecting or voltage battery bank we're connecting to you're also going to consider you know the maximum amperage of that solar panel array voltage all those factors there's no such thing is a solar controller for any solar array you size a solar array with a dedicated controller they sort of work together and remember another thing I emphasized was if you're gonna have shade on one or multiple of the solar panels think about having dedicated controllers per solar panel right not only for redundancy but for efficiency that's why I have a sailboat lots of shading on a sailboat there's booms are got a radar mask there's shading all the time on my boat so what I end up doing is I have six panels six controllers my array is awesome it was painful to put in time-consuming but you know what there's no operating costs solar panels don't need oil changes there's no fuel filter changes right it works you put it in all your capital and labor efforts are upfront you do it and then it's done but it's not easy at the beginning it's always more effort than you thought it was going to be the next thing I want to talk about here is talk about a methanol fuel cell methanol fuel cells are a device that converts methanol to a DC charging voltage so you need to be connected to a battery on switch side right because it's a charging circuit and that device basically runs in the background doesn't output a lot of power but it outputs a little power and it outputs it continuously right it's the difference between sort of the affable when we were kids you know the the turtle versus the hair you know the rabbit goes quickly but it's a sprinter the turtle runs doesn't run it go slowly but over time gets there a methanol fuel cell is something that's very quiet runs at about 22 decibels and it runs in the background and it's a way for you to recharge your batteries and have it sort of converting methanol to a DC charging voltage now it's a DC device it's not an AC device you can't run a microwave off of methanol fuel cell and the other real I guess reality is that methanol fuel is not readily available everywhere so it's more of a coastal thing you know if you're going offshore and you're gonna go in the South Pacific or in the Aleutians or you're going way off and beyond you're not going to be able to go to Bora Bora and go to a chandlery and say I want methanol m10 fuel cartridge you'll be like yeah you know I've just sold one yesterday no it's more for the boaters here in the Pacific Northwest I have some people that are doing races to Hawaii sail boaters right they want power to be generated then they never want to run the engine not that they're actually obviously using propulsion but they want the e power we'll put a methanol fuel cell on board so that they've got power being generated in the background with actually having the need to run an engine and run an alternator or will have sail borders and power borders that have generators but the generators are giving them a lot of grief they're too noisy and maintenance wise they're not always reliable will rip out generators and replace them with something that is you know weighs only 30 pounds that takes you know a tenth of this space and will put them on board and then that way when they're going in Alaska or you know the Browns are north to the Central Coast they'll have DC power being generated by the methanol fuel cell the units need ventilation obviously there are creating they do create a little bit of heat the good news is the their output is distilled water so if you have flooded lead-acid batteries on your boat you could actually use that water to top off your battery cells sail boaters are going to send the water to the bilge or on some boats where we can't send the water to the bilge because it's a dry bilge we just have it go to sort of like we'll use a bike bottle you know bike water bottle and we'll have the water go in there and we'll capture and then we'll dump it overboard okay the next thing we're going to talk about the two other topics are power sharing remember this is a prime example we talked about a little year this concept of Jeff I've got one alternator two alternators but I have multiple battery banks think about a sailboat er or a simple powerboat single single screw and power motor or obviously a sailboat or not can around with a single engine many of us many of us as motors are gonna have a battery bank for a house and a battery bank for our engine single battery for engine and a battery bank made of multiple batteries for your house but at the end of day there are two battery banks you have a single alternator how does one have a single alternator go to two places it's like having an income stream you get a check from work you have one check can you deposit one check to two bank accounts you can't how would you do that you tear the check in half you go to one bank give some money you're like I I spread it evenly I'm gonna do 80% in this Bank 20% in this other Bank it's a problem right so how do you share one alternator to multiple places same thing with solar maybe you have only one solar panel one controller but you want to recharge another battery bank how do you have one battery bank share with another battery bank or do how do we have one alternator go to multiple battery banks so those are two different devices the first one we're going to talk about and you'll see on the slide a little bit in the middle there's a little device called a battery combiner and just above it is a device called a battery isolator so the next two things we're going to talk about our battery combiners and battery Isolators the battery isolator is in the middle of the slide so what is the battery isolator do a battery combiner sorry misspoke it's a device that whenever it senses a charging voltage effectively puts your batteries in parallel what does that mean it's sort of a device that opens and closes a door and it does so automatically it's sort of like a greeter it says you know what in times of Plenty I will share the voltage from one battery bank to another battery bank meaning whenever I sends that one battery bank is full enough and more than I need in one battery bank I will basically let that voltage be shared to another battery bank a battery combiner is effectively it's a digital solenoid it's a device that automatically turns a switch on and off and says now it's time to share and it's really essential because it allows multiple battery banks to exist on your boat and to get a charging voltage from one single source that's how you have multiple battery banks on a boat with a battery combiner notice that they're both connected to the untwist distribution meaning there are no switches in between a battery combiner and a battery right now what I decided to show here on this diagram if you look on the left hand side what you'll see is that I have an engine battery it's connected to a fuse right directly to the battery and then on the right hand side I have it connected to the untwist distribution which is in turn connected via fuse to the battery but there are no switches at all even if you turn the battery switches all off on your boat if there's a charging voltage to one battery and it senses that charging voltage it will share it with the other battery that's connected to it okay so when you buy a battery combiner you need to make sure that you think about what is the maximum amperage that is going to be going through that battery combiner it's going to be 55 amps 120 amps 300 amps those are things to consider the other one that's often overlooked again fusing eighty-five ninety percent of you unfortunately you're gonna have battery combiners that are unfused because it works without it right like a seat belt so make sure that the fuse is rated to handle both the maximum amperage of the device and also the size of the wire connected to the device now you can't measure voltage without ground you can't just put one probe on something and say I have 12 volts voltage is about a differential it's a difference it's like height right it's like the water level like and you need a reference point so these devices need a ground because otherwise you can't measure voltage you can't just measure voltage with one probe you need to go the difference between this and that that's what voltages it's differential so you also need to fuse the negative and that's often overlooked too I would say one last piece of advice on battery combiners they're generally not meant for battery banks of different sizes you want a world of magic or paying putting a large battery bank connected to a small battery bank via combiner will work perfectly fine perfectly flying until until you have a battery bank that is very heavily discharged think about the analogy of water and when you have two pools of water that are the same height and you have a pipe at the bottom of those two pools of water and they're both the same height you open suddenly that pipe if that both pools are the same level there's no flow right there the same equal level you suddenly bring that level more and more down the more difference in level the higher the flow that's what we do with general dams when we create electricity hoover dam in the united states prime example you've got a high water level on one side you got a low water level on the other side the bigger the delta between the two levels of water it's a faster the flow right because the waters try to equalize itself so when you have a large battery bank that is maybe full and a small battery bank that is empty or vice versa there could be a huge amount of flow beyond the size of your alternator beside beyond all size of all charging so i've seen for example where the largest devices the chargers only 40 amps the alternator is only 55 amps the battery combiner was fused with a hundred and 20 amp fuse and the fuse blew how could a fuse blow where the charging is only 55 and 40 amps what happened is you had uneven battery banks as soon as they'd sense that it can share it was trying to bring that other battery up and the current going through that was so high that it blew the fuse and the problem is are when fuses blow you don't know that they blow unless you're sort of curious and then what happens is that battery ends up not getting a charge forever and ever and I see that with battery thrusters all the time battery thruster battery banks and four months down the road the owner calls my thruster battery bank is at 2 volts what happened generally is that there's a fuse that blew the fuse blew that to the combiner and it never got a charge and then without a charge a battery will sulfate and then will die so that's why people buy battery Isolators binary Isolators are only connected to one charge device generally an alternator so that means that when you fuse that device you know that there will never be an alternator will never create more than its rated output if you buy a 120 amp alternator you're not going to have one day at 300 Apple turn ater it's not gonna happen I mean if it fails it's gonna fail to zero it's not gonna fail to more right otherwise we'd all be hoping for you know failure for more output it's not gonna happen so that's why we and our tool can we often use battery Isolators connected to an alternator as a way to say for example think about this would be a common experience I want my battery thruster battery bank to get a charge when I'm running my engine because generally you're using your thrusters when you have propulsion right I mean that's when you should use a thruster and but you want that battery bank to get charged maybe it was full before you left the dock right I see that all too often I'll see a battery charger connected to a battery thruster bank but no alternate connected to that battery bank meaning if they leave the dock and they had a hard time leaving the dock while they're under way to a new destination that battery bank did not get a charge and now that your destination is also windy it's all a little bit sketchy the thruster now is running never gotta charge until they'll see another battery charger being powered from shore power that's why I'm a big fan of making sure that thruster battery banks get a charge from an alternator if you're underway like a windlass you should not run a windlass without having your alternator running as well right you want to offset the voltage drop you shouldn't be running a let's not worry about running the engine let's lift the windlass or run the windlass lift the anchor and then we'll run the engine it's not just because it's unsafe to drift you want the alternator to help you lift that anchor and chain right and you do that by running the alternator so one of the big takeaways again fusing make sure that you fuse your battery Isolators to not have what I consider nuisance tripping right so if you have 120 amp alternator you're gonna size the wire for 1.25 times that so have the wire size for 150 amp for sure have the few size for 150 amp right that way you'll never have nuisance tripping right because if the fuse trips or blows you won't know you don't know unless you're really really curious and think about how many of us have battery banks without volt meters it again this would never happen in the factory the factory has someone like me driving everyone else crazy including the accountant the owner and I might know you need a vole beater and eventually because I'm nagging them so much they give in that's what engineers do they're like you need a voltmeter on every single battery but how many thrusters are installed at the factory vs. installed at the commissioning stage show of hands here who has a thruster in the room anybody how many of you have a voltmeter on your battery bank thruster Beck you do what kind of boat do you have sir yeah of course absolutely north oven now you look at a north oven and you look at a price per length you're a crazy person if you buy a north oven and you look at just why would I spend so much more money when I can buy something for so much less now I can't afford a door slob I can't afford a north oven but I don't think people that buy north oven are crazy if you can afford one the price is more than just length and space same thing with a saline it's fine I can't afford one I have a Catalina it's a production boat it's okay but I'm not going to miss a north oven owner or a saline or and say well that's just stupid no it's better and the reason it's better is because they end up doing all the little things right having a thruster battery bank without a voltmeter is having no sense of pain and doing an endurance marathon thrusters die all the time not because the manufacturer of the thruster did a bad job is because they're run under a low voltage same thing with all in Lass's we blame the device but what we should blame is the installation the shortcuts remember always do it right so what I end up doing is I say well at least have a voltmeter near the thruster battery bank if it takes too long to run the wire all the way back put a little villa meter be curious you know when you leave the boat go check to see oh yeah I'm a checklist right as a boater if you don't have a checklist you have a phenomenal memory or you're not doing it right I have a checklist on my boat I go in I'm like do I have a charging voltage yes I can leave the boat and so you want to do that if you have a battery thruster or a thruster battery bank or a windless battery bank or a generator battery bank or an engine battery or a house battery you should always know what your voltages so you can know that it's getting a charging voltage all right with that we've got some time for questions any question anything electrical just the only caveat is if you can't ask the question in less than a minute I'm going to take the question in the back because I don't want everyone running for exits yes sir there advantage and running the anchor winch battery put it very near the anchor winch or is it better to rough the house batteries 20 feet back great question you know the the dilemma that we have as boaters is I have a windlass should I have a battery bag for the windlass up front near the windlass or can I run my winless from a battery bank that's 20 feet away remember the more battery banks you have in your boat the more you have to manage those battery banks it's like having multiple checking accounts right imagine if you had four checking accounts five checking accounts you got to start worrying are all my accounts having money deposit in them are they being maintained so that's one of the downsides of having multiple battery banks is you need to make sure that they're getting the right amount of energy right so that would be one reason why you wouldn't do it but the flipside is certainly for a voltage drop perspective it's pretty ideal to have a very battery bank almost add the windless the flip side is you need to find a way to charge that battery bank which brings in complexity twenty feet is not that far from a battery bank for a windlass I would personally in that situation run large cabling like I'm able that's what happened I have a 35 36 foot boat my battery banks are midship the run to the windlass is about 20 feet but 20 feet return right so it's about a 40 foot run I have a 1500 watt windlass because I always go bigger of course always go bigger Engineering me can't stop and then I have two watt wiring from the windlass to the battery now I can tell you I spend more money on the wiring than I did the windlass but my windlass runs amazing it's ten years and I have a voltmeter on my windlass at the helm and when I'm running my windlass I can see the volts at the windlass and I have very little voltage drop but most people when they install a windlass they buy the least expensive wire that they can humanly buy and unfortunately the consequences of that is they're winless end up failing prematurely I don't like failure I like predictability so go with in your situation go with big wires and have it one to the house battery back in that situation yes in the back battery yeah that's another great question so on a boat where you have a thruster battery bank should your windlass be run off that battery or off the house battery in most situations I would run the windlass off a thruster battery back you already are going you already have a bank there you might as well minimize the voltage drop you already have dealing with the fact that you've got to charge a thruster battery bank and you're rarely rarely running a thruster at the same time as a windlass could happen but pretty rare could happen it could happen there's situations where you might have side winds and stuff like that or you're anchoring and you're trying to be precise in your anchoring spot but generally you're not going to be running a windlass and a thruster at the same time so I would say in those situations I would run a windlass to a thruster battery bank before I would run it on a house okay another question anybody else yes although there's no wires up interacting with okay Wow that is magic question is that I have a stainless steel sink or Basin in my galley is a galley in the galley and it's actually energized with 12 volts that's terrifying where the hell is it coming from that is that's yeah okay all right yeah so yeah that's that's intense that's that's that's like sort of like that I can move objects with my mind nice teleportation one thing that I would worry about is if the sink is somehow connected to a stream of water and your water is actually energized so you're actually putting 12 volts in the water around your boat that I would love I don't know never seen that that is a world of pain you can that's just you got to be that's not something you could put on the backburner you know you know how we all have lists as motors and there's important things and not so important things and things you'll deal with later that one is right at the top unless you have a gasoline engine and it's leaking and you have non ignition protective devices in the gasoline engine room that one's got to make it to the top that one it's gotta be yeah absolutely okay other question oh yeah in the back yeah our batteries in my house bank and I'm thinking about swapping them out for AGM does that mean I probably need a bigger alternator I do have a higher speed than a 55 amp but up and also a bigger charger and I have an independent 40 amp charger okay all right let me paraphrase tell me if I got this right for the benefit of everyone this gentleman has six golf cart batteries and golf carts by default can only be deep-cycle by the way and he didn't mention that so golf cart batteries are only deep-cycle batteries flooded so they're flooded deep-cycle golf carts can you confirm if it's a 12 volt bou 12 volts or 24 12 so 6 golf cart batteries there's gonna be they're gonna be wired in series in parallel right because you got to get to 12 so that's about a 600 amp hour battery bank marketing is gonna say 700 720 but let's not believe marketing so let's bring it down to reality it's about a 600 amp hour battery bank at 12 volts and the gentleman has an alternator that's bigger than 55 ABS but we don't know the size and the battery charger is 40 amp so right off the bat from our presentation we talked about the minimum size of a charger has to be 10% of a deep cycle battery bank off the bat 40 is definitely smaller than 10% of the 609 power battery bank because 10% of 600 is 60 so you're running right now two-thirds or 6.6 percent of your ideal charging rate so currently right now for sure your battery charger has to be increased to at least 60 amps at least that's minimum river minimum is not ideal it's minimum so yes regardless if if you change AGM or not with your golf carts you should go with a larger charger and a GM's can take a higher rate of charge so if you put an inverter charger for example a 3000 watt inverter charger with 150 F charger those batteries could take easily 150 F charge rate easily that would be about 25% of capacity and no problem so there's a minimum of 10% and AGM is still also 10% and your alternator also should be but remember this is I could go down a rabbit hole and I have a 20-minute conversation on YouTube on this but what you see is not what you get in life if it was so easy right a 55 amp alternator will never output 55 amps you're like what no a 55 amp alternator under normal like output so you're at cruising rpm and you're not trying to save fuel rpm you're actually like loaded not wide open throttle but at 85% so you're not like like on a diesel you're at 2,600 rpm on a gas boat you're at 4,500 rpm you're gonna get maybe about 25 30 amps out of a 55 amp alternator there's a lot of reasons for that I can't spend too much time that's why you want a bigger altar near like for example think about it I have one of my service vehicles in our fleet as a sprinter mercedes-benz Sprinter I think the alternator onboard is on board on the vessel vessel can't even say non-marine terms on the truck I think it's a 240 amp alternator I never see 240 hands from an altar near its internal regulated that's when they're it's cold as soon as it gets hot it's the rated by 15 percent internal regulation D rated by another two thirds I'm never running my engine at maximum rpm all of those Rd rating and that's why you generally get a little bit more than half than your rated output with an internally regulated alternator so there's room for improvement if you go to a GM that's the long version anybody else have questions all good ro yes the charge controller charge controller has to be mounted close to the batteries right yeah ideally yes absolutely in an ideal world a solar controller should be mounted as close to the batteries as possible what would be your maximum distance guidance for that the question is is there a maximum way that you can get away as close as possible I've seen instances where the solar controllers are 2030 feet I've seen that there are reasons why you want it as close as possible but again this is the the problem and I'm going to just put a little bit of sort of a parenthesis here there is no such thing as a boat an ideal boat remember we talked about that and a boat that conceptually follows every rule does not exist so people that are on forms that give you black and whites all the time people that live in a world of it has to be this way and no other way generally what they don't realize is a boat is full of compromise sometimes the controllers cannot be installed in the battery bank location it's better if they are but it's not a showstopper so sometimes for some reason the controllers are located somewhere else and I wouldn't worry too much about it I really want other questions yes sexual diagram for that trigger it's kind of like it was possible to direct our switch DC yeah good question so here's the the the schematic that you're talking about the gentleman was asking Jeff I'm looking at your conceptual diagram and I'm wondering can you in this situation the way you have it wired is it possible to run your switch loads directly from your charger and if you look at this diagram first thing you'll notice is the charger DC output is connected to the unstretched distribution so why is that important because when I shut off the battery switch that are running all my loads all loads except a bilge pump because a bilge pump would be connected to an on switch distribution right all loads like water pumps lights anything you chartplotter is your navigation suite all those things when I shut off that battery switch that you can see on sort of the top right of the diagram my battery charger is only connected to the on switch distribution so the loads are not going to see any power and the switch you'll notice is not connected between the on switch distribution and the battery it's low it's connected between the loads and the unstretched distribution so the answer is no not in this situation yeah no but this is I'm gonna parentheses think about this happens all the time by the way this is a world of magic and it's related to your question if you shut off your battery switch and you're there still power at your panel right you're you shut off power from your batteries to your DC panel you turn the switch off and there's power of the panel I would suggest to everyone that that should worry you that's like having a house that's floating in air there's no pipes connected to the house and there's water flowing through the taps that's a horror movie I mean that's what it is it makes no sense how can something not be connected to something else and yet still work right like the sink there is obviously a connection right so if your DC panel is energized when you're not connected to the battery that means that something is energizing that panel what is it your solar panels your battery charger your methanol fuel cell your wind turbine what is energizing a panel without a battery and the problem is all battery chargers are not power supplies a power supply is a device that keeps the voltage steady regardless as loads come on and off right a battery charger needs to be connected to a battery because what happens and this is literally what happens as you slowly load up for example a battery charger it will react and will offset the loads by the current the charging current and so a part of me so as you're loading in this thing up you're turning light slowly and slowly the battery chargers now outputting 40 amps to offset the loads let's say and then suddenly you shut them all off what's going to happen to the voltage through the roof it's not gonna stay at 14 or 13 it might go to 20 and 20 volts you'll have the voltage spike what happens to a voltage spike things go kaput that's where people lose stuff a voltage spikes are serious on the AC side or the DC side that's why big boats expensive boats they have a lot of AC gear on board have isolation transformers they're preventing voltage spikes that happen on board both they don't have them when there's a voltage spike and that happens on sort of destination marinas where the voltage is not steady and suddenly a big boat disconnects the voltage Rises some people get a huge voltage spike and then they lose $50,000 worth of gear on board because of a voltage spike that's why you don't want to have any charging Chargers are not power supplies they're completely different devices okay any other questions well good I want to thank every one of you for being here today and being curious about marine electrical systems if you want to reach out I want to say that you can you'll be able to find all the slides on our website under the /media tab you can also find all these other presentations on YouTube and the Seattle Boat Show is inviting all of you to provide feedback at the link over here so thank you everyone for being here [Applause]
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How To: Marine Electrical Seminar
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