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[Music] hi everyone welcome to a presentation on solar panels for your boat I'm Jeff Cote with Pacific yacht systems and I thank all of you for being here with me sharing a little bit my passion about marine electrical and trying to stay at anchor for longer or do more of the things we want to be doing and solar is one of those things that allow us to get there right so a little bit about myself I'm intrinsically I think Who I am as a person is a boater I've actually given thought to what I would have on my tombstone and I was like what would describe me more than anything and it's one word a boater and all all the things that are part of that so as an engineer I always knew that I wanted a boat I was about four years old when I started visualizing boating and I clearly remember those days and once as soon as I finish University headed west and came to the coast and started voting and what I realized shortly after buying her first boat which was April Fool's Day in 2006 was that power was going to be a real issue on our boat water was doable but power is going to be a big issue how was I going to be able to stay at anchors for extended period of time and do all the things I want to do which was run a refrigerator we'll talk about that but ultimately I wanted to be able to run a refrigerator have some lights on at the very least and not have to run my main engine at idle to recharge my batteries and so that was sort of the genesis that actually brought me not only and now as a boater but as someone who now wants to solve problems thinking there's got to be a way to resolve this power problem on our so this quest led me to start my business which I'm going to talk a little bit about and if you're curious about geeking out I use that term as a way to say I want to make my boating experience better what are the tools out there that I can make boating better for myself we've been writing 2 columns every month at Pacific yachting for almost 10 years now I think 9 years and about a year with Northwest yawning and if you're not a subscriber to those magazines the good news is you can find every single one of the articles that we've written on all the topics on our website everything is there in a PDF or HTML format so you can see it as a web page or you can download a PDF and it's going to look exactly like the magazine so that's a way for you as a Boulder to sort of maybe you know five years ago you weren't interested in solar now you want to read the four or five articles that I wrote over the last 10 years on solar and you want to print them out and educate yourself on how are you gonna make a decision about that website is py systems see a Pacific yacht system so py systems dossier and I'm going to show you a link at the end about that as well on the last slide another good news is all of these slides are actually going to be posted on our website sharing is caring you know honestly what makes boating I think so attractive to many of us is the community aspect you know boaters help each other out I mean it's part of it if you don't like other people you're probably not gonna find it too friendly to have all these people offering a hand offering a hand when we're docking offer hand when you have you're stuck your engine won't start offering a hand I remember we were stuck one year in a place and somebody wrote over and said you know we've been here for seven days fighting the storm are you ok do you need any food that community is beautiful and as part of a boater myself I think well we do what we learn working on every one of our boats I simply return and give back to all of you here in the room and we all do the same the company that I found it is called Pacific yacht systems were just north in Vancouver and we get invited and I think that is a huge honor on about a thousand boats a year clearly I don't do the work or get it done the team around me actually gets to get to work on people's boat and accomplish the dreams that we set forth together but that experience is what I'm going to be sharing with you today specifically two solar panels and the other thing too is if you rather watch videos than reading we have a really big presence on YouTube we're at about now 165 videos of varying lengths people seem to be resonating it's a way in the evening it may be tired of watching the normal TV and you want again you're interested in a specific topic and you're like I want to I'm curious about alternators batteries solar anything related to electrical electronics is our specialty and we're publishing content all the time sharing what we learn on working on our boats we're gonna start the big stage I mean what what are we looking at here let's understand that Solar is is just one way of recharging our batteries right on a bow there's going to be multiple ways of recharging both batteries pretty commonly everyone's got an engine pretty much and if you've got an engine you have an alternator and an alternator is one way to recharge your batteries but that means the engine has to be running and generally at idle an engine doesn't output a lot of power so it means that you need to rev up and a lot of us maybe trawlers or sail borders are not revving up as high as we want to save fuel right and so our alternators are I'm not outputting what we want and the other challenge that we have here in the Pacific Northwest is once you're cruising let's think about it the distances between an amazing Anchorage to another amazing Anchorage is not measured in days and weeks it's two hours three hours 15 nautical miles 10 nautical miles 25 nautical miles but once you're in a place in the Gulf Islands or a desolation sound or the Browns or even the outside of Vancouver Island the distances you cover are not all that great and we can stay in Anchorage's for two three four days how do you recharge your batteries if you're not running your engine and that's what we're going to be talking about silver the other thing too is people end up most of us will have what's called a battery charger on board right a battery charger is a device that if it has AC which is shore power or an AC generator running can convert that AC source shore power or generator and convert it to DC but not all of us in the room are going to have a generator so what happens when you're not connected to the dock or what if your boat in the summertime is on a mooring ball in front of maybe a cottage or near a you know recreational property that you have and you're not even plugged in so a charger is really of no benefit for a boater if you can't connect the shore power the other thing too is I have owners that really didn't use a generator for anything else than recharging the batteries and the generator over time was giving them grief you know not all generators are running flawlessly and without any grief and I can't tell you the number of boats where we've taken out a generator that really didn't see any use other than recharging batteries and was giving a lot of grief to the owner I've done that on a bunch of grand banks bunch of sailboats 50-footer they're like that's it I'm done with the generator I don't like the noise let's take it out here's all this sudden space I have for something else and let's put solar panels as an alternative because realistically if I can get away with the Sun doing what the generator used to do why not and lastly another common way of recharging batteries is you see that a lot more not so much in the Pacific Northwest but in the Caribbean and cruising areas in the South Pacific wind turbines right here in the Pacific Northwest the challenges are Anchorage's are so bulletproof or hurricane holes that the wind needs to be really blowing hard for it to blow hard in an anchorage right the trees are giants I mean you know for it to blow 30 knots or 20 knots and in Anchorage in the Pacific Northwest it's pretty uncommon so in the summer when things are rather mild you're not going to have a chance to use your wind generator as often here in the Pacific Northwest definitely arguments in the Caribbean for sure here in the Pacific Northwest a little harder so what we're gonna be looking at next is we're going to be talking about specifically solar and solar controllers okay let's let's not forget that you absolutely need a device in between a solar panel and the batteries to regulate the sun's power because your batteries might be full right it's like going somewhere and there's a buffet you know at the end of the day you're only gonna eat if you're hungry you can be maybe say hey you know what I'm gonna eat a lot because I'm anticipating but if there's endless food in front of you at one point you're gonna say I can't no more right you got to stop and so what the regulator does is it says you know I know there's a lot of Sun out there yeah I could use that Sun and recharge the batteries but the batteries don't need it so that's what the role of our solar controller is it regulates the voltage and decides through a smart charging curve right bulk absorption float and it's gonna say you know what at this point we'll just sort of float the batteries but we don't need to overcharge the batteries so that's really important so when boaters come to me and say Jeff you know tell me what what can solar do for me why would I consider solar generally I'd say one of the number one reasons is Jeff I want to stay an anchor an extra day you know I'm at an anchor now for two days or a day give me another day at anchor or give me another two days at anchor the other one that's really common I have boaters that say Jeff I remember the day when I didn't have a refrigerator on boat on board and I know that my refrigerator takes a lot of power offset my loads related to the refrigerator or I am doing big power boats now where they're saying I have a generator I plan on keeping it but I don't want to run my generator recharge my batteries as often put a huge solar array I'm doing that right now in a 65 north oven we're doing a 1800 watt array the owner has two generators on board too but we're doing 80-100 away array has a way to reduce the generator run time right the owner would rather not run the generator to recharge the batteries they'll run generator make water through water maker to run maybe the stovetop right run large AC loads on board but not to recharge the batteries here's another big and this is we're comparing our notes here from the Pacific Northwest with other boaters in the Caribbean or elsewhere doesn't tell you the whole picture in the Pacific Northwest in the summer months we have very long days the Sun rises quite early and goes and wants to sleep you know over the horizon or sets very late what that means is that we have 15 hours of sunshine in the summer you know in june/july parts of august parts of May and now what that means is that your solar panel will give you better output not at any given moment but because the day's longer if you work more hours you're just simply going to have more income and that's where there's a question up front out just one second that's where this is a big differentiator in the Pacific Northwest that we're going to get more from our solar panels in the summer now the converse is also true in the wintertime when it is the end of the world and it the days are only eight hours and the Sun is low on the horizon and it's raining non-stop your solar panels are doing the very opposite so you win on some days and you lose on other days you win in the summer you lose in the winter the good news is most of us are not voting in the winter and most of us are voting in the summer question upfront [Music] yeah so the question upfront was how do solar panels do on overcast overcast it really depends what's overcast you know there's some days where you know the thickness of the cloud of the overcast is so dark it feels like Armageddon and some other days you see it's overcast you can't see the Sun for example on those smokey days where we had some huge forest fires you know those days don't the smoke is there but it's not thick it's just blankets everything so you're still getting good solar output you're not seeing the Sun but the sun's going through the thicker the clouds the darker it is that's when you lose solar output like on a day like now you know you're getting because also the Sun where it is on the horizon you're gonna get only maybe 10 15 % of output on a day like today but in the summer when it's cloudy but the skies are really high and it's still bright outside you're gonna get maybe two-thirds of the output it's not a black and white it's not on or off another consideration is and I hear this quite often from a lot of boaters when we're doing boat shows or presentations is Oh Jeff flexible flexible solar panels don't give the same sort of output as rigid that's why I'm not gonna do flexible those days are gone nowadays if you buy a hundred watt solar panel rigid or flexible they're going to be the same size the difference is you're gonna pay a lot more for a flexible than a rigid that the difference is in cost it's not a factor of and I remember another question they're like oh whoa my rigid 100 is way better than my rigid flexible I'm like no a 100 watt is a 100 watt right it's apples to apples the difference is if you buy a mono or a poly and we'll talk about that later then there's difference in sizes and pricing but a hundred watt solar panel is a hundred watt solar panel regardless if it's Palo monney rigid or flexible okay one of the considerations and advantages with flexible solar panels is they're so lightweight meaning as we bring weight more aloft on a boat that under way in following seas when the boat is pitching and yawing can make the ride less comfortable so there are concerns putting heavy solar panels off a solar arch 12 feet on a sailboat off the waterline all right that's why racers try to avoid having a matte radar on top of a mass above let's say for example the steaming light because again when the boat is on its side it keeps going more on its side so rigid solar panels versus flexible is you know easily a factor 5 to a factor of 10 in weight you can buy a hundred watt solar panel 170 watt solar panels like 5 pounds it's pretty much weightless and what that means is you can take that weightless solar panel and you can start mounting it on your Bimini right you can put it on your canvas because easily you can't start putting I know 3 200 watt solar panels on your existing Bimini and just hope that the canvas maker was expecting that you'd be putting in another 200 pounds of solar panels on that Bimini structure but if it's flexible it's only another 15 pounds so it makes the decision of putting huge solar arrays on large Bimini's easy because they're practically weightless you'll see when you're walking through the show or you see other boats there's multiple ways of mounting these solar panels on your canvas on my boat and that's the picture of my boat right there I use zippers on all four sides there's some people that are actually bolting them through literally putting a nut and a washer you'll see that iverson down below there's people that use velcro there's people that use snaps I've seen owners that take bungee take it on and off there is a wide selection of choices on how you go about mounting a flexible solar panel onto canvas I'm not gonna offline if you're curious about pros and cons I have an opinion but again you know what that's to the owner of the boat to decide what's the best way of doing it on their boat you can see that in the picture flexible solar panels are wafer thin I mean they're less than a thickness than a quarter they're more like maybe a nickel in thickness a little bit more than a dime there then they're very very thin so the other thing that they do is they can actually follow a curve and I have to say when we started doing solar panels about 10 years ago I would have never thought that more than half of our market would be power builders because in the past most power motors would it be pretty rare to see a power boat with rigid solar panels and ultimately what it does is it changes the line of your boat as a boater you have to ask yourself and that's what most bolts their curves it's all curves there's very few straight lines on boats you know mass is an exception a boom yes but after that on a powerboat think about it everything is just curves there's very few straight lines and the beauty of a solar panel and I give this a lot from power boaters and sail herbs as they say Jeff I don't want the look of my boat to be any different I love the way she looks I love the profile of the boat and if you can give me solar but keep the look of the boat the same I'm interested in talking I don't want it to look too functional I want it to be functional but I don't want to look functional I want it to be aesthetic and I still want to have the gains and that's one of the considerations was flexible and that's why for example that north oven owner is covering all his awning on a 65 and he literally told me says my partner does not want to see solar she doesn't want to see it if we can put it on and it looks pretty I'm good with it but we love the look of our boat make sure that the flexible solar panels just blend in the other thing too that we end up doing is you can actually buy these solar panels with peel and stick adhesive and you can actually literally without doing any deck penetrations which is a concern or should be a concern to all of us literally peel and stick the solar panels onto hard tops so I'm doing sea rates that have you know sea raised flybridge that have these huge hard tops I did a 560 we covered the whole roof with solar panels again easy no holes we're not worrying about any sort of water intrusion and the probe the boat looks the same so you can actually peel and stick it we even did a Laguna 50 huge 56 Lagoon the whole brow on the front like we literally put a thousand watts of solar panel on the brow nobody could really step there is sort of angle you wouldn't go there and we actually peeled and stick all these solar panels right on the brow a question up front [Music] the question from the gentleman up front is what about the relative lifespan of solar panels flexible versus rigid in my experience my boat I have Sol bian solar panels now for 8 years my output is still quantified I measure it every day like I'm a geek I'm an engineer so I sort of need to justify all the money that I spent to someone else so I have the proof right there my solar panels are still doing exactly what they were eight years ago the one thing to consider if the solar panel was well built and that's a question like anything the solar panel everything is basically almost it's enveloped in epoxy like there is no place to access that panel like it is literally covered in epoxy so there's no weather damage that can happen to that solar panel if the solar panel was well built at the beginning five years down the road or ten years down the road it's still going to be well built the problem is some boaters are tempted by lowest price and they're thinking they're getting a deal and you know I get it as a boater we all want a deal of course we do the problem is not so much what you pay is what you're going to get out over time and that's where then on the cheap end of the spectrum the feel-good purchase the one that wasn't hard to do but it's probably two years you'll see a lot of yellowing of the epoxy because it's not meant like the really good ones have a 20 year life the budget ones are going lowest cost possible they're thinking it needs to look good today but tomorrow is someone else's problem right some solar panels are offering five years warranty full replacement the other really interesting thing and I think it's worth remembering is that when you consider solar panels especially if you're not just looking at the budget selection which is worth considering I mean there's nothing wrong with that you make a choice but in the end what's interesting about a company like gioco or Sol bein or Solera and there's a lot of different companies out there is all the permutations of sizes the challenge as a boater is we're not putting solar panels on a roof where it's an open canvas right where you have endless choice to put the solar panels you've got no constraints no windows no backstays no hatches you've got endless space that's easy you could just say I'm gonna buy a bunch of hundreds hundred watts and I'm just gonna stack them on a boat you have a lot of constraints things are in the way and so what we ended up doing is we'll have let's say in our shop we have about 30 different solar panel sizes and what you're doing is you're playing a little bit of a game of Tetris you're trying to say I wanna had an owner last week said to me he has a catamaran I want 800 watts of solar panel but then the game is how do we get 800 watts of solar panel on the space that he has available right it's not like oh I just choose a panel and make it work you know the panel's might be a little bit too long a little bit too short so a little bit too short but then we miss 2 feet that we could have done so what we end up doing is playing with these different sort of permutations on our website if you're curious there's all these different dimensions there's multiple vendors out there that sell solar panels that's up to you but educate yourself it there's a lot of choice to maximize your solar array if you choose that's important for you okay now we also do boats with rigid no doubt you know for example if you're a power sail boater and you already have a nice solar arch on your boat right it's already there it's built or call it a radar arch and you've got space like for example think about catamaran owners that have a at the back they have sort of a dinghy davit huge area where we can mount rigid solar panels right it's right there it's sort of overhanging in the back we're not gonna do flexible we're gonna put a bunch of 300 Watts we did we are also in the RV market I had a boater well not a boarder an RV or from Arizona brought is our V to us and we ended up literally doing a bunch of 330s literally put four or five of them on top of the RV the hardtop right right over so it depends if you have a space to mount those rigid solar panels and if you can handle the weight so those are the considerations because if you don't have a radar arch on your boat let's say a sailboat that is not a low-cost item that is not $100 $1000 line-item depending on the shop that you're going to get if you get it built in stainless I mean these that's it's a big boat unit it's not a small boat unit small boat unit being a thousand dollars it's a big boat unit okay so that's something else to consider it does it make sense am i comfortable we're doing right now at Pacific sea craft that's in the Carolinas at the factory they're going with an arch but it's a choice it's it's you've got to decide the pros and cons you certainly going to spend way less per watt on a rigid solar panel than you will on a flexible quality to quality if you buy you know the best quality on rigid the best quality on flexible it's going to be a huge ratio in terms of price huge ratio okay you could be at least three times four times more expensive for flexible yes question in the back tolerant of having sale material over the top of it intermittent yeah that's a good question in the back was if I've got you're putting solar panels let's say on top of a Dodger and we have a sailboat and the sales are gonna drag on top of the solar panels is it better do you rigid or flexible I would probably say rigid rigid is glass flexible is epoxy right it's sort of a concoction I think that's gonna scratch easier than glass on my boat for example I have never used a brush on my solar panels ever ever because the moment it's sort of like brushing a pan a non-skid pan the moment use that brush on the non-skid pan you're gonna be brushing that non-skid ban all the time I just simply use water and a hose to wash off the debris if there's any like we'll have a lot of Poland in the summer for example or dust when the forest fires were around there's a lot literally of ash I'm just simply gonna wash it down I have never brushed my solar panels once but also nothing sticks to it because I want it to be perfectly smooth again an example of rigid solar panels there's so much choice with rigid tons the problem is on the budget for flexible very little choice if you're not budget then you can start having a lot of permutations so again to repeat I sometimes have motors that say to me I really am cost conscious I really wanted the lowest price solar panel option for me I'm like okay we're gonna look for budget solar panels but then they're like oh I also want a 400 watt array and then you look at this space configuration then they have on their boat and it cannot be done it just cannot be done and then the owner by default says I still want 400 I didn't want to spend money now I'm not spending money because I'm just don't care I just have to if I want 400 watt it's the only way of doing it is with different size dimensions a narrow or skinnier longer more rectangular so you'll have more permutations on the higher-end solar panels another question from the gentleman up front no this question is are you if you're avoiding brushing solar panels can you are you avoiding walking on them now a flexible solar panel in the name says non rigid right it means it's not a bridge okay a flexible solar panel will not span a distance with a hole underneath and provide any rigidity it's not a bridge that means if you have solar panels that are flexible you need a perfectly smooth deck beneath perfectly smooth that doesn't mean anti-skid because the dimples between anti-skid are maybe yeah I don't know in inches maybe 1/16 I'm thinking in mils there maybe 4 mils 3 mils that is a bridge because a solar panel is the thinness the wires of thinness of a human hair it's not a bridge so when we mount them and we're gonna walk on them for example that catamaran we actually ended up smoothing all that anti-skid away right so that the solar panel is perfectly perfectly smooth that's another panel what's underneath and then you can walk on it because the solar panel is not acting as a bridge it's not feeling any gaps now not all four panels can be walked on you have to buy a solar panel that says it can and again you'll spend more money with those panels okay you just got to do your homework ask the right questions like this gentleman did here right look for it say you know what I have holder sometimes that have solar panels I had an order says sometimes my daughter's are going on top of the roof to jump off the boat and I want them to be able to walk on I'm like it's gonna be slippery he's like yeah that's fine but can they walk on the solar panel like yeah yeah but it's gonna be slippery he's like yeah I'm like I'm warning you it's slippery he's like yeah yeah I'll get well they've been didn't test three times we're good I mean it's just your daughter's no big deal look what's the worst that could happen but what you want to do is you absolutely want to have a smooth surface okay smooth surface below so the next big dilemma is a bowler when you're looking at solar panels you're saying okay Jeff I'm hearing this term monocrystalline all the time and I'm hearing Paulo polycrystalline all the time what's the big difference ultimately it comes down to efficiency meaning a monocrystalline panel is going to give you more power for any given size so for example if you looked at the back of this laptop let's say and you said I've got a this area here if it was a hundred watts of so this would probably be 10 watts of solar panel it'd be 10 watts with mono and the zyg exact same size would be 8 watts with poly that means a poly panel will not give you as much output for any given size now you might ask well Jeff why in God's world would I choose less output when I can have more the trade-off is money you're gonna spend way more money on a model panel over a poly panel so now you know some owners for example in boaters are saying Jeff I've got way more canvas or surface to mount solar panels than I need solar in that case what we end up doing is we end up putting poly think about in the countryside you build ranchers in the cities you build high-rises right so if I'm on a sailboat for example and he's a purist he doesn't even have a Bimini he has a doctor and he takes it down and he has so little canvas it's he's trying to be as low profile as possible but he wants as much solar panels as possible will end up doing a mono solar panel on his dogger because we're working with so little space right and so that would be one of the differentiators when you're making a decision you're like I want a lot of solar but I don't have the space for it well then the way you do is you trade money you could get you could do the same amount of surface area with Paulie but you'd have less power it's about really it's about 80% of Paulie is what a model could give you so if a model gives you 100 the Paulie is gonna give you only 80% of that for the same amount of space so here's another way and I remember this trick question one as a kid grade five or something and the teacher asked I still wanted to be an engineer back then you know what's heavier a ton of bricks or a ton of feathers I was like bricks epic fail it's a ton a ton is a ton does it matter now how much space does a ton of feathers take versus a ton of bricks big difference so a hundred watt poly panel is going to be bigger than a hundred watt mono panel right because if it's less than sufficient you need more space to do the same amount of work here's an example of a boat trawlers where we're doing on the brow I've done a lot of boats actually this last summer where power boaters in behind in between sort of the lower helm in the upper helm they have this sort of brow and that's a place that's nobody ever walks on right because it's angled it's not really safe and so we're covering those areas with solar panels and they're not notice they're not perfectly the the best neutral position for a solar panel is obviously if you're gonna average right you're gonna put it basically parallel to the ground right so that the Sun on average is going to be moving like this over the horizon now some people say wouldn't it be better to move my solar panels as the Sun moves around I'm like absolutely if you have endless labor and you can set delegate that task yes absolutely now remember your boots your bow is also moving like this at anchor probably so then you're constantly going like now that is a full-time job so the best way is to simply go for neutral parallel to the water right and as the Sun rises you're not gonna have great as the Sun sets not great when it's going to be overhead it's gonna be better and you're taking law of averages this boat here obviously if the Sun is behind is not going to be getting good solar output because it's angled away okay but it's a compromise yes question yeah that's correct the question for the gentlemen was good question yes that solar panel install if the sun's coming from the aft look at that Bimini it's gonna provide chaining you know what honestly if you want perfection you can't be building there is no such thing as perfect boat period I don't care how much it doesn't matter I mean you could be a billionaire there's a few in this town and they're spending money like there's no tomorrow on boats and there's no such boat that says yeah that's a perfect boat it's just another boat full of compromises every single one of our boats is a boat full of compromises you're just it doesn't matter regardless of money you're just you can't have this or that your and that's what makes it so interesting to everyone because what are you chose are you gonna make with what you have and what you can do right so here I'm gonna there's a lot remember these presentations are going on our website on the media page I'm gonna show the link a little bit later but I'm just saying don't get fooled and think that the lowest price solar panel is the best value it's like a car the least expensive car is not the best car the most expensive car is not the best car somewhere in middle is where you're gonna find the sweet spot for value what you pay and your ROI right so Louis is good in some ways highest is good in some ways but in the middle 80% of the voters we deal with are gonna find sort of like that normal alleyway they're not going to be drawing the McLaren and they're not going to be drawing the least expensive car they found on Craigslist they're finding a happy medium okay and those are things to consider about when you're getting solar panels one of the things I want to talk about this is generally you can tell a quality solar panel from a non quali simply by looking at it I remember one year we had really good solar panels in our booth and people are telling me Jeff you need to offer a budget panel this is about six years ago we brought the lowest cost panel you could buy I'm like they want it let's give it to them that year's the year that we sold more expensive solar panels than I've ever sold in my entire life it was like a factor of five it was through the roof because they saw comparison when you see them side-by-side you're like oh that's what I get for this I'm gonna have that so just do your homework look at what budget looks like and look at non budget and you'd be like okay yeah yeah I get it just do your homework here's another example on a sailboat half cabin notice that solar panels are installed on canvas and you can then remove the canvas right so I see that on some boaters they're actually just easy and I have owners that are storing the solar panels let's either in Mexico right not everyone stays in the Pacific Northwest although it's beautiful here big fan and people are sailing offshore they'll be literally putting this out there they're solar panels when they're leaving they're both there for maybe six months and they just want to clean everything keep it as sort of empty as possible they'll put their solar panels remember the thickness literally under their their bed the the mattress you can't feel it it's other than a junction box which is about about a centimeter not an inch I'd say maybe over half an inch a little bit over but the rest of the solar panel is you can't feel it I mean it's less it's about this thickness of a nickel okay so to recap what we talked about a little bit you know what when you're thinking about solar and I give this all the time about multiple questions what are your goals with solar right let's I mean we're getting solar but why are we doing it people say I want a solar I'm like ah first question is about what are we trying to do right because there's an engineer we've got to ask ourselves what are we trying to solve so one common one and I get that because we deal with even boaters that have boats on mooring balls everywhere Jeff I have a boat I'm not at the boat all the time but when I come on the weekends and it's on a mooring ball I can't have a battery charger but I want my batteries topped off right I want them to be flow charging okay we'll put a small reasonably sauce small solar array just to maintain the batteries it's like being connected to shore power I even owners that do that with boats on the hard in the winter time in not a barn but in a field where there's no shore power at all actually happens to a bunch of my clients are in Washington State they're bringing their boats back in land in the wintertime they can't connect the shore power but they don't want to remove batteries it's a hassle but they want to maintain them we'll do a solar array just so they can maintain their batteries in the winter time that way they don't have to take the batteries off because a battery that is unmaintained for a period of time like eight months will sulfate and a battery that sulfate is the battery that will die prematurely so if you don't like changing your battery banks too frequently you want to have your batteries on some sort of charging regiment the other one too which I did on my boat I said okay I want solar to offset everything I use every day on my boat I don't ever want to worry about power again I'm done I want to sail when I can sail I don't ever want to think about having to go back to shore power I never want to run my engine on idle I just want my fridge in my lights to run in the summer off solar period right so then you go I want all my amp power consumption just to be taken care of one year about five years ago we lost our alternator meaning it stopped outputting it happened in late May we did not change the alternator or repair it till the end of September didn't need it don't need an alternator don't have we come up to marinas people would say do you want to pay extra for you know a plug-in I'm like plug in for no don't need it I'm fine they're like you don't want to recharge your batteries don't need to we'd leave our boat at a destination marina and we leave it there for a week two weeks the fridge would be running the food would stay cold and we would even plugged in so every day the marina would have charged us something no need to plug in now I can't do that in the wintertime in the wintertime I can maintain my batteries but I can't run a fridge in this type of weather in January December when it's sort of Noah's event happening outside one last thing I saw a question the other thing to offset refrigeration is really popular and the last one is I want to state longer a tanker Jeff I can't add more batteries on my boat I don't want to I know the implications that I have to change my charger my alternator I'm just looking at can you find a way to give me another day in Anchorage you know like right now I'm staying two days if I could stay a third day in the summer without running my engine and then I'm leave the Anchorage and I go to another destination give me another day anchor without changing my electrical system that's a really common one that's probably that in refrigeration or my to number one sort of request that I get from boaters on what they were trying to do it's over I had a question up front so how many ones did you choose the question is how many watts that I end up choosing patients and will come I've got a little formula it will come I'll tell you the formula yes go ahead the last one extend your time and Anchorage isn't that basically the same as offset in your daily what's the distinction yeah the question is while Jeff isn't offsetting your time at extending your time at Anchorage and by an extra day or staying there and definitely the same it isn't because one is I'm actually let's say I'm offsetting every day I'm out putting everything I need for my day plus some right if I'm using 190 hours a day my solar array is giving me a hundred 125 if I'm extending an extra day every day I'm going in a deficit but my deficit is not going down as slowly so I might be doing 50 amp hours a day and so the first day I'm not going to go as low as used to go second day I'm going to go a little bit deeper but not as low as I used to be and the third day then I'm gonna go to where I used to be on the second day but I'm offsetting right so you're probably asking well Jeff how the hell am I gonna find out you know when my daily amp hour is a yes well if you don't know one way to know is having a battery monitor onboard right that's a sort of knowing what your burn rate is you know when we plan for a retirement one of the first questions someone's gonna ask is how much money do I need for retirement they're gonna what's your burn rate how much are you gonna need per year are you gonna need 20,000 a year you're gonna need 100 are you gonna need 200 what's the number and then you start you got and know how much money you plan on spending when you retire and so when you size battery banks you size everything on a boat you need to know what your daily and power consumption now you can choose to ignore that number but welcome to a world of pain it's like retiring not knowing how much money you spend oh you know I saved X let's see what happens yeah things are really not working out you know I'm thinking I'm going to become a greeter again you know I'm a liar walmart is hiring well if you didn't know how much money you're spending saving for retirement is only part of the equation you've got to be able to foresee what your burn rate is otherwise you're going to be complaining about your batteries are dying prematurely things are not working out the fridge is dying your food is time we got to go back to the dock you know all these other things so a daily amp our budget is essential to make all these decisions good news through experience again being invited to work on all of your boats I can guess what you're out budget is if you come to see me at the end of the class you tell me what kind of boat you have what you do I've been on enough boats I've been thanked you been invited enough boats to know what a daily AMP our budget is on average per person you know a little bit of experience pays off so no no need to worry here's another example on a catamaran I was talking to one of our clients as this morning 55 footer we did something similar where we ended up doing sort of a stainless steel structure at the back to provide more coverage from the rain because they're going up north you know to Alaska and we covered that extra coverage right with more solar panels in this case is just stainless because it's not raining in certain parts of the world but over here if you're going up north in the summer you have to be willing to have a little bit of rain in cloud Alaska and northern British Columbia is not always sunny even in the summertime so here's the calculation on how to figure watts from amp hours there is a long formula and if you want to geek out I can share with you but luckily there is a shorthand and if you say for example I have a hundred watt solar panel right how many amp hours is not going to give me add a 100 watt solar panel is going to be a hundred watts divided by four will give you 25 amp hours a day and yes there's a typo in there if you can pick it up 100 times 20 is not 25 so basically the math is if you buy a hundred watt solar panel you're gonna get 25 amp hours a day let's say it's a 400 watt solar panel there's no such thing but let's say it's a 400 watt solar array how many amp hours a day will that produce about a hundred amp hours you can go the other way around you say Jeff I have a 75 amp hour budget on my boat so that would be a very modest boat running a refrigerator nothing fancy some lights a water pump right sailboat low 40s high 30s very modest no heaters no TVs no televisions no running inverters no hair dryers like sort of a Luddite with a fridge and some lights and a water pump and you say Jeff I want to run indefinitely at anchor in the summer you're gonna do 75 times four equals 300 you need a 300 watt array for your book that's it you can imagine now the north oven or the this big catamaran that I did that's doing a 2000 watt solar array that means that they're burning 509th hours a day right some boats draw a lot of power that's why these huge catamarans are sort of floating mansions have massive solar arrays because they have multiple fridges they have lots of lights they have inverters right same thing with it big north oven II we were we're doing solar up to about 6070 you know even on 70 footers we're putting them up there trying to reduce their generator runtime now that number is realistic this is not a number that says oh this was on the best day it's sort of like my financial planner told me that my returns were gonna be double-digit forever you know and I'm looking at my savings my 401 K and I'm like what the hell this has not panned out this is a realistic number in the Pacific Northwest in the summer from May to September on some days I get way better I've seen the number up to about two point seven two point seven which is ridiculous that means that is a hell of an output so if I get for example and on my boat which is 450 watts and I divide that by 2.7 let's call it 3 but it's way better than 3 that means I got 150 amp hours of solar output a day that is like that's like being a professional hockey player or NFL player it's like let's make it rain drinks on the house let's do it you've got 115 amp hours of output and you're only burned 75 you got no problems run the inverter keep the TV on do whatever you want it's the sun's giving us the energy if you don't use it it's just being wasted that's what's so amazing about solar and in case you're wondering why the hell we'll use such a big array is because I was worried about the shoulder season because we boat all year round and I wanted my solar array to work from March until end of October so I've got more capacity than I did in the summer but it literally when we go out for Easter we invite friends were six of us on a Catalina 36 and we're fine and that and Easter is March April and we've got enough of a solar array to run that boat and we have two refrigerators because a lot of people so will bring this sort of a little cooler and we're good here's an example of solar panels on a brow here's an example on a hardtop and here's a diagram and we're close to wrapping up here's a diagram of what solar panels look - a dedicated controller or solar panels in series that's when you have two solar panels where the voltage are adding together right and you have one controller so you can do that you can you can run them dedicated to controller in series to a dedicated controller or in parallel I'm not going to go in the reasons why parallel I have a little bit of aversion to it's generally what to do with voltage drop and also what happens with amperage but if you wanted coals an old version go dedicated or go series okay if you're curious on why the wise take longer than the what's we could be here all day if I told you all the wise don't mind asking or answering afterwards but I don't want people running for the exits so here's an example of solar panels in series versus solar panels in parallel you notice in parallel it's a little bit like series think about two golf cart batteries two golf cart batteries are six volts you are positive to negative to make it 12 volts if you have two 12-volt batteries on your boat and you want a larger Bank you go positive to positive negative to negative right parallel is positive to positive negative to negative series is positive to negative yeah that's right yeah the voltage is add up which is not a bad thing for series because it offsets voltage drop again I feel free to ask questions sometimes I'm you know to be in the back there for an hour just feel free bring it on no problem I'll answer any question you want there is some reason to my magic yes question is it better to have two small panels versus a big one no in the costs on a smaller panel is the larger the panel the law the less cost per watt is so you would generally go with a bigger panel if you can yeah there's reasons that redundancy why you would do single controllers and there's also reasons of shading why you would do single controllers okay everything is easy until you do something everybody is easy to criticize anybody doing a sport you put skates on you play golf you do anything you're like oh my god wait harder than I thought just can I can trust you if you're gonna do solar on your boat research research research do it once versus improvise MacGyver and then go off I wish I knew that before I wouldn't have done all those decisions do not go in the well of despair I see people going down the well of despair too often right just getting busy and doing things don't always pan out that's a little bit on the wire of the solar panels you'll see that there BC it you can't see from the image but it's actually double jacketed when you buy solar wiring it looks like a gauge 8 but it's actually a gauge 10 the jacket is double the thickness and it's made for outdoor rated so it will not actually in the Sun and then the rain you can't put indoor wiring outside you just can't the Sun is a cruel cruel as we all know there's a little bit of Sun is good too much Sun is not a good thing and the were meant to be outside we also end up hiding the wires in these wire looms right so people don't like seeing wires I'm very aesthetically driven it's expensive to be aesthetically driven cause always more to make things pretty but it's a boat if you know I tell people if it was in a boat it'd be a barge barge can look ugly you know it doesn't matter if it's not pretty it doesn't matter but a boat it's gotta look pretty right I mean we generally all love our boats I certainly do so I care about how it looks on the outside I don't want to look too functional these are the connectors that connect solar panels and you'll notice you can actually connect them or disconnect them right they're called mc4 connectors and here's another image that's kind of neat those are how we get the wires inside the boat because it's one thing to have a solar array outside the boat how do you get it inside the boat and you do with these cable entries deck clamps and I'm just going to show this as the last slide and then we're gonna go in the back just to recap think about why you do solar right to think about the number that you're gonna calculate think about if you're gonna go flexible or rigid pros and cons rigid is more expensive than flexible but flexible will not affect the look of your boat and also the weight and when you're doing the installation of the solar panels make sure you use outdoor rated cabling so with that I'm going to close the presentation and if anybody has further questions I'll be in the back thank you everyone for being here I really appreciate it questions in the back you