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[Music] you [Music] now it's one thing to store energy but it's another big challenge to create power so you can store it and that's what we're gonna talk about next and that's why a battery bank is good but it's like having an ability have a large bank account it's easy to have a large bank account but it's much harder to make money to store in your bank account so when you leave a dock you can have a dock and you can have your batteries full but how are you going to recharge those batteries and what we're gonna talk about next is power generation how do you create power so you can store that energy in your batteries alright so we started and we're basically we started over here and we looked at the heart of everything is your batteries now we're gonna go through basically this area here and we're going to talk about the different ways that you can actually generate power so that you can store that power so the first thing we're going to talk about which is sort of the most popular device that I think 99% of boaters have on their boat is a charger chargers are called as well converters like on older boats it's a marketing name right charger what is it everything is a name that you define to something but on older boats you'll see the word converter that's a charger or I used to like to use to put a little bit of distinction I call them smart battery chargers to distinguish them from other battery chargers that maybe potentially can overcharge batteries or under charged batteries so here's conceptually what we're talking about with a battery charger a battery charger needs AC current right to work and that AC current can come from multiple sources it could come from a generator it can come from shore power right you're not gonna have an inverter run a battery charger because you know it's a vicious loop so you've got two sources to run your charger you're ready to connect it to shore or you have a generator that's running so now you've got a charger and chargers for the most part have multiple outputs right and so in this instance we've got a charger in the middle and it's charging both a house battery and an engine so that's what it does the engine doesn't need to be running right like nothing to do with the engine you could have your mains running that's not gonna run your charger and that's a common misconception right your engine running is turning the alternator and your alternator has nothing to do with running your battery charger okay your battery charger only runs on an AC source which is either shore power connecting at a dock or if you have have the opportunity of having a generator some boats have multiple generators running a charge so effectively you use chargers and the larger the charger will reduce the time it takes to charge the batteries and like we talked about minimum charge rate is 10% so you got to make sure if you're increasing the battery bank size on your boat make sure your charger is sized for that new battery bank size don't assume that the builder built your boat in 1985 thought that you would double your back and power battery bank capacity also strongly emphasized and I cannot tell you how often I take these Chargers if your charger looks like from a different era and it was an error that was governed by engineers where aesthetics did not matter the 1970s that charger needs to go that charger has to go get it out so how you tell if your charger is good or not is if it looks ugly it looks like no design aspect was involved the opposite of an iPhone right iPhone is not there's engineers there a lot of my classmates work there but there's a lot of people in marketing to make things look pretty if your charger looks from the 1970s or 80s you've got to get rid of that charger that charger is a ferrule resonant charger and it will kill your batteries if it's left on okay very very important and that's what they used to call converters and the habit and I talked to boaters that had boats in the 70s and 80s they would literally go down to their boat once a week once every two weeks they'd go at lunch at the clubhouse turn the charger on for a couple hours go back turn the charger off and that's how they would maintain their batteries you could not leave a charger on your boat forever my charger nothing fancy zan tracks inverter charger has been on my boat for the 12 years that I've owned my boat and it's on every moment that I'm connected to shore power every moment as a way to keep my batteries in float that is exactly what they call a smart charger and a smart charger does three things it does bulk absorption float and I over the years of trying to convey this technical information what I've come to realize is batteries are a lot like us people when you eat food and you're hungry and you come and you have your famished you're gonna eat at a very fast rate at the beginning as you get near the end of your meal you're gonna slow down that's slowing down when you're on a three-course or four-course dinner that's absorption you're still eating but you're not eating as fast as you did before that's bulk charging and at the end when you're eating a little bit of cheese or some grapes or a little bit of almonds and you're just pecking it food that's called floating that means you could have a three-hour dinner at the last hour you're just nibbling on food that's float so bulk absorption float that is the best way for you to recharge your batteries at the fastest rate and not overcharge the batteries and to leave the charger on all the time most batteries want to be on float all the time not at all batteries I'm not gonna get into it but most batteries want to be on soap all right so when you're looking at buying a charger what are you looking for well first of all you want to make sure that you can select the battery type because there's no such thing as just a battery is it a flooded battery an AGM a gel a spiral AGM there's all different kinds or a bonus get one that you can actually dial in the settings that's always better right make sure that you have a charger that's temperature compensated temperature compensated is essential I know it sounds geeky but when you think about all the battery voltages that we've ever heard about like 14 4 12 8 12 - those are sort of like middle values that you hear all the time those values come from a battery at 77 degrees Fahrenheit everything changes when the temperature of the battery changes when the battery gets colder the voltages go higher when the battery gets warmer the voltages go lower there's an inverse correlation between battery voltage and battery temperature the best scenario is if you have a temperature compensated charger the charger will not assume that the battery is at 77 degrees Fahrenheit which is by the way how often does that happen and will actually correct for higher temperature or lower temperature so also make sure you buy a marine model there's huge implications if you like money and like you're underwater metals and you do not like changing your prop frequently because of galvanic corrosion and you have stuff under below the water and you don't want to lose it and a hall out and spend five grand 10 grand never ever buy a kidney entire charger and put it on your boat leave it on I'm not gonna go into the details of why but I can tell you it's gonna be painful very very painful props stainless steel shafts rudders some are metal that are left underwater with those Chargers can give you a lot of grief never ever ever buy a off-the-shelf charger in a non marine model for your boat okay ever insulation so what are the things we talked about you want to make sure that your battery bank and your charger your charge rate is 10 percent of capacity this is 95 percent of you don't have this I just know I mean I've been fortunate enough to walk on and do maybe I don't know 2,000 3,000 electrical audits now probably closer to 3,000 95 percent of the charger leads are not fused they're not because what does a grown man do when there's an instruction manual in front of them ignore it why because grown men are infused with knowledge and engineers are annoying and why does someone to say so much about so little and the manual is meant for the box because if someone maybe needs to read but certainly not the person installing it because they're infused with knowledge and well it just it's sort of like building IKEA without a manual it's not gonna go well and the problem with the electrical is you don't know that the tables crooked you don't know that it's not working because you're just satisfied with having a car that moves you don't have brakes you don't have a seatbelt there's no taillight and you're like look at what I did it works Chargers absolutely need to be fused at the battery every connection and I'm gonna safety first needs to be connected to battery the only exception is a starter only exception well first of all Chargers must some of them do their little like pro Mariner pro sports but remember when you buy a piece of equipment for your boat there's no such thing as cookie cutter on a boat right like your when you bits like building a house you don't go to Home Depot and you're like is there a pre-made house here that I can buy and I'm just gonna assemble no you buy building materials to build your house so when you buy an inverter you buy a charger you buy anything it's one component one building block of a big system same thing with an inverter you buy an inverted date doesn't come with a fuse doesn't come with a switch doesn't come with a lot of things this is come with a wiring that's one piece like going to Home Depot and buying a tub you buy your tub but now you got a how are you gonna plumb it it doesn't come with everything so that's also the fallacy it's not like IKEA where they put everything in the box right there's no such thing on a boat it's you buy one piece and then you gotta buy the other pieces to make it all work so that's really important make sure and I see this a lot that the breaker is meant to size ball crate it's all about you see this thing I'm always talking about this this false sense of satisfaction of making something work and not thinking this is leads to so much disappointment and remember what most people in all of us do and have a tendency you'll not blame yourself for the failure you're gonna look elsewhere and I tell this the same thing to my text when something doesn't work I never say to them oh yeah it must be the equipment no I'm like no no the real variable is us what did we do that could be wrong look inside look at yourself and for a battery charger you might have connected your batteries are full it's on flow only draws maybe one app you leave the dock you go out and then suddenly you come back and now the batteries are neat to bulk charge and now the Chargers not drawing one app is drawing 10 apps or 15 amps and the breaker was size only 5 the breaker trips so it's about making sure that the breaker is sized for the load and not just working when the batteries are full because the amp draw of your charger is gonna vary depending on the charge rate of the charger also I cannot tell you how many times I've been on a boat for example this boat owner decided to go AGM great I didn't know him never talked to me when a GM loved it AGM batteries died after about 2 years a year and a half very unfortunate changes the battery year later battery dies another year later battery dies again now he's not blaming the batteries because generally it's like well the only thing I changed was the battery so it must be the batteries fault the third time he looked inside he started reflecting what could I have possibly done on my boat that causes my AGM batteries to die after a year year and a half so we got a call went on board found out that the charger was set to a fixed voltage that was constantly it was in charge not charged it was in basically a mode called power supply mode and it was outputting 13.8 volts all the time dip switch the owner didn't know was there and so the culprit was that thinking that everything is easy my number one rule having had a business now for what 12 years is nothing is easy there's exceptions always assume the worst nothing is ever ever easy I always think what's left what's right how is this gonna work so your charger make sure that you select the correct battery type for your charger and you might have a boat right now and you think everything was done right by the previous owner wrong don't assume anything question everything wonder oh I have a battery charger does it the right setting right that curiosity that thirst look into things is not a gift that everyone has as a boat owner if you want things to last longer you have to always always go hmm is it right and then actually if you have a temp sensor connecting it to the right place that's the other thing yeah so you want I had an owner down in Preston Beach they had a lifeline those actually they were energy Northstar batteries about not a thousand of battery but close eight nine of them they install the temperature sensor in the wrong place and the batteries got really hot and they lost their battery bank boss-like and that's like seven grand in batteries like that's starting to hurt like if it doesn't hurt then you really don't have problems seven grand in batteries and that's not installed that's just batteries and then you got to take the batteries out right and we had to disassemble furniture to give them out put them back in just because the temperature sensor was not installed in the right place so that's a really big issue I talked about that a little bit earlier right a really common thing I'd say with top five things that we do in our business especially for power boaters is people that come to us and say Jeff I'm running my generator just simply too long you know like my generator does water maybe I'm doing whatever I need to create hot water with the hot water tank I'm doing certain things on my boat that need a/c but I once I've done the things I need to do maybe maybe even my stove right once I've done what I need to do which may be on most votes is one or two hours a day or maybe three hours a day the rest of the time that I'm running my generator is because it takes forever for my batteries to charge back to full forever some owners it's twelve hours eight hours of running the generator in the background to recharge the batteries that's because the charger was not sized with efficiency in mind then then the Builder didn't build it so that you could recharge your batteries quickly they assumed that every night you'd come back to dock and if it takes you 12 hours or 40 hours to recharge your batteries so be it there are ten percents charge rate but 10% might not be good enough so what we do on many boats many votes is we'll add a secondary charger you know you'll have one charger that's 150 amps and then we'll put another charger that's 100 amps now your charge rate is 250 amps and so that reduces the generator runtime and remember if you have a generator the generator wants to run load it like an engine engines wanna run loaded so having a diesel generator on your boat that's running at low loads because your Chargers in absorption and you've got a very small rate of charge and you're only loading your generator by 10% or 15% isn't a good thing so having more Chargers we had a one boat that had a five kilowatt generator and we were charging three Chargers at 350 amps that order rent recharge his battery bank once a week that's it that's what he wanted that's what we did once a week he ran it for two hours that's all he needed to do boom in bulk and everything else it was perfect quiet peaceful and was a power motor so it is possible to daisy chain chargers to put them multiple chargers so that you can reduce your charge rate all right so now we're basically recapping what we talked about with a battery charger right battery chargers need AC and they've got multiple outputs here's another little tidbit before I open the floor to questions if you've got a battery charger not all charged leaves are the same there's going to be multiple charge leads like charge lead one two and three the battery bag that needs the most amount of charge needs to be on lean number one because your battery charger is not independently looking at every lead and thinking oh what does lead Wan want lead to lead three it's actually looking at what lead wants once and it replicates they don't see one another but it replicates what lead once does on LI 2 and Li 3 in other words if you have a house battery bank you don't put house battery bank on LI 3 you put house battery bank on lead one and you might put your engines on lead two and leave three okay questions about battery chargers how come once again go ahead oh absolutely yeah absolutely and most chargers that's actually on the lower side you're talking about about question is would you cut a lead to put a fuse on a battery charger most battery chargers do not have leads on them they just have posts most now if you have a smaller charger maybe 20 amps or 15 or 30 amps that go into center console fishing boats they're literally going to be plug-in type of battery charger so they've got an AC cable going to the unit and they've got DC cable and going out but that's for the most part for more of a center console type of grade II white 25-footer you know boat that the charger is done aftermarket and they're just putting it making it easy for the owner and that charger is actually gonna have fuse on the leads when you buy a charger like could be as an tracks it could be a pearl Mariner could be a victor on there is no wiring in that box the box comes with just the charger then you have to connect the DC sides and you can have AC side and you have to buy that wiring completely separate and then put fuses not at the charger but fuses at the battery because the charger will never output more than realistically what it's meant to charge and you're sizing the wire for that charger the batteries though are endless not endless but near endless energy so you don't you want to make sure that the leads always start at the source of power and for our reason on a boat that's the battery is the source of power yes you had a question I'll come to you once again I have not seen one that's a good question question is is there a battery charger that has an external voltage sensor and so that why would someone ask that and that's a like in a dream world if I get out I would love that and the reason is because there's such a thing as voltage drop and we'll talk about voltage drop a little bit tomorrow but voltage drop is a reality what you put out is not what you get and if you have voltage sense at the battery you can actually adjust and we'll talk about that with external regulators because they do that you can adjust the output of the charger or the alternator so that you offset what's called voltage drop I haven't seen one never the charger output is always looking at just what is the voltage at the post and that's what internal regulars one second yeah go ahead no no they're all I have brains give you an example on my boat I have one charger 1 external regulator 6 controllers 6 solar panels each solar panel on my boat has a controller and I have a methanol fuel cell I have 9 devices on my boat that recharge my batteries potentially none of them talk to one another they're all doing one thing looking at voltage and they're all looking at voltage and the rate at which they pulse and look at voltage is what tells them to come on line or not it's sort of like the way I was thinking about it before was like imagine you come from a large family and you have tons of kids the Keen ones are always asking my mom can I help can I help the ones that ask the fastest are gonna do the most work the ones that don't ask us quickly they ask mom maybe once a day mom do you need any help those are the ones that are gonna get away with doing less so the devices that pulse and look at voltage the quickest are the ones they're gonna do the most amount of work but they don't need to actually talk together now if you go full crazy and obviously no problem you buy a full Victoria on full master volt system you can actually have them all talk to one another and they'll yes it's possible but you can retrofit without that yeah you question over here that's a great question question is what should be the size of my fuse from a battery charger and the output of the charger let's say the nominal charger is 40 amps are you gonna fuse it will talk about fusing later but it's a good question now do you fuse the wire at 40 amps if the charger does 40 no why because you don't want to have nuisance tripping because we don't live in the Star Trek world where someone's going to check that fuse if it's blown all the time right there's not a little robot on top of the fuse looking and telling you that a fuse is blown you won't know that it's blown so you don't want to ever have a nuisance tripping so you rate the wire to handle one point to five times right so it's the chargers 40 amps you rate the wire for 50 amps and you rate the the fuse for 50 amps that's a common mistake where people now a device will pull more than its rates but a charger you never want your charger to trip by nuisance right so the VHF says put a 7a fuse you put at 7 amp use there's a difference between a draw and a push right so an alternator all these devices that push you don't have one have nuisance tripping and the way to do that is to do a correction factor about 1.25 times okay any other questions oh yes go ahead alright could be an ATO ATC to be honest if you rate the fuse we'll talk about that too there's different fuses some fuses you actually have to physically change some fuses or thermal circuit breakers I'm gonna get into that a little bit later and I'm gonna dwelve into the pros and cons of each but yeah there's a choice out there and I won't talk about it now because I have a whole section on fuses I know it's kind of boring but I love geeking out like that alright any other questions on chargers alright okay if you don't have a charger on your boat almost black and white you need to charge on your boat unless you're going offshore you'll never connect to shore power which is different but for most of us our coastal cruising there's a huge benefit of having a battery charger if you're sailing around the world forever you don't have a generator you don't need a charger you'll never use it yeah because they're there they overcharge they overestimated what the battery wanted the float voltage is too high the float voltage is too high and they underestimated what the battery could take in bulk so they were over cautious on one and under cautious on the other like they screwed up on both sides the charger doesn't output as much as it could it's too cautious it's they were worried about it and they also thought that battery needed a higher flow charge so it's kind of a lose-lose and smart Chargers have been around for at least almost 20 years like probably 25 like this is not new technology it's not like an unproven thing right like it's not like revolutionary but some chargers on those have been there for 40 years those have got to go