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[Music] good morning everyone good morning thank you for a Bluewater cruising Association for hosting this event what is an alternator an alternator and it sounds silly as a question but actually it's a pretty common one alternators are on on engines they only work and give DC output when the engine is turning and some alternators won't even output at low rpm meaning if you're an 800 rpm you're also your engine disturbing but it's not enough to self excite the alternator and so you might have an alternate working and you're at 800 and it won't even turn on it needs to be a 1,100 1,200 rpm so an alternator creates DC power and DC power alone and it's meant to recharge a battery okay that's how its wired generally in our cars in boats 99 percent of us have this set up here on the left you have an alternator and the alternator is daisy chained to the starter solenoid voice post and in turn that post is connected to an on/off or source selector battery switch and that switch is connected to battery and this is 99% of all boats starting circuits that's how they are the one on the right-hand side which is a lot simpler is actually on not even 1% of the boats and the one on the right is much easier and much better and the reason is there's less things that can go wrong because this on/off switch is can cause a world of hurt you can stop a car with a wall your car will stop guaranteed if you turn your battery switch off and this is in 99% of the cases again you don't have an alternator feel disconnected this battery switch it's like 99 - so much so that I've never seen it wired so that would mean that I've never been on a boat I'd never seen it and that's like probably I know I'm probably had eight thousand boats now that I've seen I've never seen it so at this point at this point I've never seen it but people say it's a feature and it's true it is a feature but nobody wires it if you turn your battery switch off when your engine is running guess what happens you toast your alternator your alternator dies it's done it's like stopping your car suddenly so that's why on all battery switches if you read the fine print on all our boats is gonna say never turn off when engine is running every single switch this one even says is like right here you can't see it it's in yellow every single switch from the 1970s onwards never turn off one engine is running and that means that your alternator if you ever are worried that your engine is not running or it's running weird or you do something and I did that by the way 2006 Bob my boat April Fool's Day Easter a long weekend invited a bunch of friends on board and I was worried in my alternator was we're not working and what I did is like oh I wonder if it's got a good connection and with a lot of bravado a lotta bravado because I mean men need a lot of bravado when they do things lots of confidence I turned the battery switch off and I can guarantee you my altar never worked after that until I got it replaced I blew out the alternator and this is why I'm here in front of you because I learned from my own mistakes as well might we all do right we have to and I thought it was easy and that it was foolproof but it's not foolproof 99% of our boats are like this and if you turn that battery switch off when your alternator is running you'll lose your alternator so the purpose of an alternator is to convert engine rotation and enough engine rotation to DC output alternators have nothing to do with your generator running although generators have alternators but that's to recharge the battery that started the generator have nothing to do with shore power you could have your alternator removed and your Shore power it's still work shore power or generator recharge batteries through converters or now known as battery chargers right and the reason why we spend as motors a lot of money on alternate is a way to reduce the charge time of our batteries right sailors worry about that all the time I want to motor out of an anchorage for as little time as possible motor into an anchorage as little time as possible when possible when possible being the key word here and I want my alternator recharge my batteries and so what we end up doing is installing high bigger and bigger alternators which are called high output alternators on engines so that we recharge the batteries at a faster rate of charge okay same thing with tiaras for example fast boats boats that aren't gonna be running for a long time because they're going at 30 knots because I mean you can't run for five hours a day at 30 knots at one point you're gonna do a circumnavigation of North America you can't just do like you're not gonna do 300 miles a day you're just gonna be going down the coast so I 1 point all these fast boats what they're doing is they're putting high output alternators as well like tiara all stock come with high output alternators and external regulators like a sailboat er because like a sail boarder they're not going to be ideally running their engine that long they can't for the fuel bill they can't for many reasons they're just going to blow by you know you can't be covering that speed all the time and so they're gonna have high output alternators or trawlers are gonna do the same thing big battery banks you need to recharge the battery bank you might not have a generator your alternator is the only way of recharging your alternator when you're not connected to shore power this is a revelation it's sort of like the difference between marketing and reality when you say you have 120 amp alternator or a 4 instant a stock alternators 255 amp alternator these are all the caveats and the fine print that you don't realize from what you started to where you're gonna get in life it's sort of like your investments you have promised returns and then you have your real returns you're gonna make double-digit growth over the next 10 years and then yous looking like it hasn't really panned out that well oh yeah well let me tell you the reasons why I wasn't able to do what I promised I was going to do would be the difference between a 55 amp alternator and what you're actually gonna get so 55 amp is co rated first thing as soon as it get warms you D rate by 15% then you also have to realize that your alternator never runs at max rpm output who redlines an engine you know if you've got a gasoline engine or a diesel engine who's running their engine at 3,200 rpm nobody you can't you'd blow up the engine so you're running maybe if you don't care about fuel maybe 85 percent wide-open throttle loaded maybe 26 2700 rpm and that's who does that a few maybe but not many and so they're doing it at 2100 how many power motors are running their boats at 1400 1200 rpm output of an alternator is a function of rotation speed the lower the rotation speed the lower the alternate output it's not an on/off device the more rotations it does the better output it is Karl alternators are rounded to have only high output at high rpm because who drives a car at 30 kilometres an hour nobody maybe for moments but generally you're at 50 60 70 100 hundred 20 so what happens km/h of course so what happens is you end up having an alternator and because you're trying to save fuel you're also not realizing your alternator now you're running your alternate at low rpm and a low rpm now you're getting a fraction of what your output you thought you were getting so then you get a fraction of that output and then the other point too is that you actually have an internal regulator on those alternators and they D rate an alternator right off the top by 2/3 so you take all of those factors up and even if you run a 55 amp alternator at like almost 2600 rpm you're lucky to get about 30 35 and that's a full rpm so not for your about 20-25 you started at 55 now you're 2025 it's like income you know gross versus net now remember you've got lows on your boat when you're running your engine and when you're running you've got your chartplotter on you've got nav you've got your refrigerator your you've got expenses what's your income that's going to make more than what your drawers are at that given moment so imagine your alternator let's say you're running at nearly load you're running a 30 amp output alternator but the loads are 1015 you're only netting 15 amps and your battery bank is 220 app hours which is a tiny battery bank how long does it take to we charge a battery bank at 15 amps if it's 220 right and you brought it way all the way down to maybe 50 percent or lower that's a long time of engine run time that's three hours four hours to just get a quarter of that battery bank to get a third 15 into 66 that's four and a half hours of engine run done you can do it you get yourself into deficit and you hear these stories all the time about borders I just can't I'm always every day's worse I'm running my engine but it's not enough it's because they have a stock alternator internal regulator and they have a small alternator output and they're being cautious for fuel consumption and they throttle back nobody's running their boats at wide open throttle 85 percent of load well maybe some of us are but very few you want to make sure that its ignition protected right because especially if you've got a gasoline engine room but even it's not why take a chance like by an ignition protected alternator and then the variables that are going to affect the output of your alternator are going to be the belt and the engine manufacturers limitations but nowadays you can either do dual vo belt or serpentine belts and so we're often putting I did a sailboat about a 43-foot sailboat we ended up putting a 215 amp alternator on a Yanmar 55 horse engine right doesn't have a generator right so now it's a way for that owner to make it rain right when they work they're earning like at a high rate and so what they do because they're earning at a high rate they don't have to work as long right it's much better to work at a high rate for a short period of time and then work along hours for a very little return and so you've got to consider the engine recommendations what type of drive belt you have like a single V belt for example is maximum 90 amp alternator that's it 90 amp and then I had a boat at once it was about a 30-foot sailboat years ago to golf car batteries and he put 160 amp alternator on board this is 25 horse engine and I was like kudos pretty awesome 160 amp alternator and we know that a flooded lead-acid battery can only take a quarter of its charge as a charge rate quarter of a charge of 250 or 220 is 55 mph yeah good you're ready for a bigger battery bank but that alternator is completely useless to you because your battery bank is too small as a function of your alternator hence you don't want to go too big it's like it's like a symphony right you don't want one piece in the symphony to be on a loudhailer and then everyone to be dead quiet and not to be amplified like it's got to be all sort of unison everything has to play together and so you can't you size your alternator based on your battery bank size which is deep cycle battery bank size right and you got to make sure that you change your drive system if you're gonna go beyond 90 amps the other thing that's happened on my own boat I remember what I told you when you buy a boat you don't just buy a boat you buy the owners the previous owner and I can't tell you how important that is I had a boat owner that believed he knew everything about electrical and that belief was very intrinsic to who you was and on my own boat he upgraded the alternator from a stock 55 to a 120 he did he decided that he was going to increase the wire size on the alternator positive wire to one not just pretty amazing good for him pretty impressed almost there pretty good the negative didn't do a thing he didn't think about the circuit he thought that the positive wire like when we plug into a wall we don't realize there's actually three wires going every AC outlet in the wall it's called a cable for a reason there's actually three different wires in every cable he thought the positive cable was just a cable that did everything the positive was alone in itself good enough but on your boat a circuit is literally in and out and so you can't just do something big on the positive and not worry about the return and so the negative the return was like a gauge 8 unrelated though that wire was crispy almost burned over and the connections were all like corroded from overheating because he installed a large alternator but didn't think about the whole circuit so it's very important that both the positive and negative wires can handle the increase right look at the different size of alternators and also if you're gonna install v-belts or stuff like that misalignment you're gonna see very quickly on your boat that's caused by actually having a lot of dusting you know you see those engine rooms you open it up there almost caked you know with like black powder on the end on the alternator and around that's really because of belt slippage or misalignment of a belt and these are critical things to worry about when you increase your alternator size and you do that why so that you can recharge your house batteries under way faster so that when you get at a destination you don't have to recharge your batteries on idle because let's be honest everyone should know that under no circumstances given a choice you should run your engine at idle unloaded all right that is not good engines want to be run at 85 percent fuel wise you don't like it but a diesel engine wants to run load it 85 they'll run forever at 85 you run them at less you do that for fuel you run them at 14 or 1,200 rpm with just an alternator arm not good not good at all doing at an anchorage and running an engine it's not good for your engine any questions on alternators so the belt is a belt about this thick and it literally has sort of a it looks like a trapezoidal there's a section at the bottom that's about you know narrow like this and it runs around the crankshaft pulley the water pump pulley and your alternator and that's your crankshaft pulley is actually what turns that's where the drive force happens and it turns your water pump and your alternator as you get with bigger and bigger alternators it takes more friction to make the move right you know if you push two things together it's very hard but once starts something starts slipping there's a difference between what's called and I'm gonna bore people here between static friction and kinetic friction and one starts up slipping that's what happens when you're in loops you can walk down a roof slowly but once you start sliding you can't stop yourself because now the coefficient of friction is different so on a boat and those V belts once they start slipping it's done they slept more than before and that causes heat right when you rub your hands together you warm that heat makes the water pump pulley fail first because the bearings in there trance it basically transfers the heat soap and time is what we have in our normal cars now it's about an inch wide depending seven-eighths and those belts are way better at carrying higher amount of friction it's a bigger surface area right and that's the difference between a serpentine belt and a V belt on engines most of us with older engines have serpent V belts newer engines and people that have modified kits because you can modify have serpentine is the drop in output linear with an alter you know it's actually a curve and when you buy a marine alternator people are it's funny you know we all are incented in life to cut costs and we make decisions and then we justifies those issues and stir ourselves I see it all the time purchasing and people are gonna say they were on the low cost and then they justify themselves why the low cost was the best reason is sort of they make the decision first instantly low cost is best and then they find reasons to justify but what they're not considering is that a car alternator and I emphasize that before a little bit they're wounded the way that they're designed for is high output at high rpm a marine alternator like from balm or electro max are going to be wounded there's small production runs they're giving you high output at low rpm the curve goes like this almost at 1,200 gets you to nearly 70% of output and then gradually increases to 100% of output over the next let's say 1,400 rpm but a car alternators gonna go like this it's gonna be the first like until you get to like 2100 aren't 100 rpm you're gonna have like a joke of an hour output it's only going to give you good output at the top end of the range but people want to buy the cheap alternator and the cheap alternative means an alternate is mass-produced now that it's bad quality it's made for a different application and that's why marine all dairies are more expensive is because they're small production runs they're not making a million of them they're doing a thousand two hundred three hundred and so that's why you pay for custom but charging your batteries at a fast rate of charge is not something you want to cut corners on because we all need power any other questions yeah so if you have a two alternators let's say that's common you could have two alternators on one engine or two alternator an alternator per engine going back to a house battery it doesn't matter if they're on two engines or one engine it's the same if there external regulators on board and we'll talk about external regulars next you don't work nicely if they're both internal regulators one of them is probably on one point one of them Inc is going to kick out sooner than you want and then that's going to affect your engine gauges it's possible that your gauges your rpm gauges and everything are going to stop working because that alternators gonna go passive he's like I don't know what's going on here but there's a higher rate of charge I don't need to do anything I'm disabling myself and that alternator which might be running also your tach gauge is gonna actually shut off an external regulator is sort of what I consider a god device it's a perfect device every single border should have one there is no downside like an isolation transformer there's absolutely no downside other than costs in having one whoever invented he or she invented that device I'd high-five them hugs the whole nine yards it's a perfect device besides cost this device and we're going to go through it I see there's a lot of stuff going to it right and I'm not gonna explain everything right now we'll talk about that a little bit later it's not easy to install there's a lot of got jets again the manual is intimidating and most people what do they do including the people that you pay to work on your boats do they leave the manual huh they'll be bothered come on let's improvise and the only thing - I can tell you there's nothing worse than an order pressing as installer to go quicker you know what happens there's no such thing is this you don't whip an employee to go faster guess what they do when they go faster they make mistakes and they take shortcuts you don't simply go faster you don't and so I have been on countless boats cameras boats where someone spend a lot of money having an external regular installed and they undid most of all the benefits of it because it was jerry-rigged it was working but not to its full potential why because someone was inclined to either get it done before lunch or just move on or whatever and they lose out of all the benefits that we're going to talk about so an alternator I talked about a little bit before and I said okay so you've got an alternator but altered have and they all come in let's like this in our cars they have what's called an internal regulator and it's it's basically a device that's worth nothing and I know five dollars two dollars is dumb and with dumb means you've got to be if it's dumb and it's not smart you've got to be cautious right you got a plate safe and so what they're doing is they're making sure that they never overcharge a battery and that also means that they never charge the battery quickly so internal regulators are going to be the slowest way for you to recharge your battery and there's no settings you can't do anything it's always going to output the same it has a lot of negative side effects but it's two dollars or five dollars it's built into every alternator and that's called an internal regulator the reasons why we go to external regulators and I probably do about 200 of these a year is because it transforms your alternator into a smart three-phase charger now your alternator is acting like bulk absorption flow that's a good reason okay next is that your alternator output is going to probably effectively double from what you had before okay double the multiple reasons for that one because it's smart the other thing too is that it offsets what's a factor called voltage drop meaning it looks at what the batteries is getting as voltage and it doesn't assume that the alternator output at the alternator post is the same at the battery so it's actually knowing and I've actually was interviewing a few people recently and they were asking me I want they were telling me what they want net for compensation because they were normally working offshore I'm like net I'm like what are you talking about I don't know what net is what is your tax situation I don't know don't care I can only pay you on gross like seriously that's it gross only what your net what you do with are ESPYs deductions all that is on you I will only pay you on gross and the net that's on you can't tell what your tax situation is an external regulator actually knows doesn't care about gross and doesn't care about the voltage the voltage on the alternator could be 15 16 volts whatever it is it will offset the voltage drop to the battery meaning the only thing it looks like is that net it does opposite of what I do with when I pay people on the team so this device here is actually offsetting voltage drop because it measures voltage at the house battery that needs it this is by the way a really big deal as you can imagine what your net and gross are very different very different this device basically offset it you tell them I want to make a hundred thousand dollars they're like okay based on your situation I don't care your taxes you need one hundred and fifty thousand you'll get $100,000 in the bank so it miraculously offsets for voltage drop okay which is pretty amazing the other thing too that's incredible about this device is you can actually program it to do AGM gel lithium flooded custom charge profiles you can tweak it I can play with timers I can do whatever I want it's way more sophisticated than a battery charger you could ever imagine cruisers that go offshore have to have this this is how you equalize adult battery bank this will cause your alternator to act as Equalization this reduces your charge rate dramatically okay and on top of it if it wasn't good enough its temperature compensated so now your alternator is not overcharging in the summer or under charging in the winter and on top of it it also measures also the alternator temperature and it senses when the alternator is working too hot and it says you know what let's tap out let's wait let's pull back let's reduce the field voltage you're working too hard it's like having a heart rate monitor at one point when you're at 170 or 180 you're like you know what maybe I need to pull back on the spinning a little bit I'm gonna pop one this thing actually does temperature compensation not only for the battery but for the alternator and it says you know what let's reduce the field voltage let's not work as hard because the alternator is getting too warm hence it's a god device it's a perfect of us there is nothing wrong with this device everything about it is perfect so a lot of the owners that are going to be buying huge battery banks that are maybe need a custom charge profile are going to be ending getting an external regulator like that these are sort of like serpentine police you can see these are the kits that you end up installing crankshaft pulley this is the alternator pulley and the water pump pulley a bunch of companies are doing that so we end retrofitting boats that have V belts for high output alternators with these kits you can actually then geeking out I was on another boat recently they're like oh I want my absorption timer to be different I'd like it's cutting off too early we're like Oh fine no problem we're tweaking it out you can do everything you could ever imagine it's just perfect the big issue though and I can't emphasize this enough remember this the Builder of your boat never anticipated any changes on your boat meaning whatever they put on the boat was meant to work together with what was built on the boat you change your alternator from the 55 amp alternator 120 180 220 260 amp alternator never ever assume that the alter near positive wire is meant to handle from 55 amps to 260 amps so you change the alternator then you also have to change you can see some of the pictures look at the big wires someone is running see those large wires there all right they've got to change the wires going to the alternator so you change one large component you have to worry about the things that are connected to it like a balm our external regulator in Canada is gonna cost sub 600 in Canadian dollars so maybe I know what's that in US 450 maybe 450 600 bucks for an external regulator well it's gonna take you putting it in it's gonna take about a day of effort yeah a day of effort and then you got to have your existing alternator if you have one modified for external field and any alternative shops gonna do that it's tricky you gotta you know it's not it's one of the most complicated things to do on a boat but it's one of the most rewarding thing to do on a boat like I always tell sailors for example the dream is as a sailor is half an hour out half an hour in if you can see all the rest of the journey I mean that's paradise you know like you just mowed it out of the Anchorage and then you sail into the sunset and then half an hour in and if you can recharge that on a dip per day basis and have that alternator within an hour of running recharge your battery bank or read charge for two days like I did on that 43 sailboat when we put the 260 amp on 260 amp hours or 60 amps you're putting that in in an hour of runtime he's done more power in his battery bank than he could ever need for that day he can go for one hour of engine runtime for two days on anger right that's sort of a dream yeah because you're gonna have to remove you're gonna have to disable the internal regulator to make it be driven by an external regulator yeah because there's no plug for that they didn't anticipate so you got to take the alternator off bring it to an alternative shop tell them disable the internal regulator modified for external field field is basically the actuator that drives the alternator and then you install the external regulator on the boat and you follow the instructions to the letter to the letter my my installs are always bigger I'm an engineer I don't I don't cut corners always bigger on my boat my altar near too hot too hot for OTT would have been absurd but I got close I got close I don't I don't I don't know no no absolutely you want you don't want the last thing you want to do think about as motors how many things do we need to worry about as motors navigation being pretty up there weather next other boaters around us that don't know what they're doing right and then you take that and then you've got all your systems and the things that are going to break naturally on your boat even if you do things perfectly you really don't need to put other curveballs to your boat that are self-induced like that's just making your life harder you know it's like tying your hand behind your back and go into sports or something like I know I need all my marbles when I boat it there's already enough going on and so you never make a wire smaller than you need to bigger is always better side on the air of caution any other questions are we good with external regulators Solar is a pretty miraculous thing as well this is what typical sore setups look like you've got a solar panel you got your controller and yes you always need a controller always need a controller and you could do we do often solar back solar panels or solar arrays in series and you can see there's only two wires coming back right and there's a series jumper and you can have a series with more panels but there's reasons at one point why you don't want to do too much on most of the boats that we do either limit our panels in series to two panels in series because I don't want someone to hurt themselves with DC voltage most people believe that DC voltage is benign because they generally touch 12 or 24 volts but if you end up putting two about three four or five panels in series you could have 120 volts coming in on your controller and you're used to thinking that DC is benign because every time you touch your battery it's all good you've never been hurt by touching your battery and I was thinking people that own and operate a boat you know have habits and they're not always thinking oh yeah it's a solar array you know my open voltage could be 120 volts DC and that would be sort of a unforgettable moment so I'm like you know what let's play it safe here this is not industrial application where the only people touching this are gonna be like certified electricians like red sea electricians so let's keep the voltages at a reasonable level where it's only gonna hurt a little bit but not too much a typical saw solar panels come in all different voltages some only output 8 volts some output 20 volts some output 30 volts and every time you wire it in the series of voltages that's higher and higher and on one side of the controller you're gonna have maybe 12 volts or 24 volts and then you could have 80-100 coming on the other side so that's the reason why we don't wire too many panels in series just as sort of a precaution because it's not an industrial application the first question that I normally get when we size people's arrays is Jeff should i do mono or poly and they tell me a common question that I get asked is Jeff what's the difference between a 100 watt panel poly in a hundred watt mono which one is going to give me the most output and I'm remembering the trick question that was asked by my grade 2 teacher asking the class what is heavier a ton of feathers or a fan of bricks right I got it wrong I remember that I haven't forgotten and the question is that your question they're both a ton does it matter right so a hundred watt mono panel is going to be smaller than a hundred watt poly panel a poly panel is less efficient hence it needs more space right like an AGM battery has more usable battery capacity or a lithium for example right lithium batteries are more energy dense you need less volume with a more energy dense product and so with mono the biggest thing is their high efficiency so if you want you have X amount of surface area you'll have higher output covering that surface area with mono than you would with Paulie but a hundred watt poly is the same output as a hundred watt mono panel okay and the cost in there may be like why are we all going with mono I mean when they'd be better it seems to be better the reason is cost for a twenty five percent increase in capacity or output you pay a 50 percent premium in price so you'll pay more money for a model panel than you would for a poly panel of the same size okay so the globes for solar and we've reached on that a little bit earlier was okay well so what's the purpose for solar solar could be and I have a lot of owners and boaters that say Jeff I've got a boat on a mooring ball and I want solar panels to just trickle charge maintain my batteries while in front of you know they have a cottage somewhere they don't have power they keep their boat at the dock and there's no power or they keep their boat on a mooring ball there's no power and they want to keep their batteries topped off that would be the easiest thing next they might say Jeff I want to go and I want to extend I want to offset my refrigeration on my boat meaning my refrigeration takes 15 hours a day I want a solar array that's going to offset that the rest of my power are pretty modest and I like that and then I have other boaters like myself let's say Jeff I'm almost looking for daily amp our net like I want my solar array to give me more power or at lunch as much as I'm using everyday so that I need no other means of recharging my battery when the sun is shining on average I never need to plug in never need to run the alternator I can just charge my batteries from solar all the time well lastly I'll have other boaters are going to say Jeff I can stay at the hook right now one day and I'd like to stay too or I'm staying at the hook two days and I want to say a third day but I don't want increase my battery bank size right because that would be one way of doing it would be increasing your battery bank size so they say I'd like to have a way to stay longer in Anchorage without having to run my engine so the good news is the math to actually calculate how much how do you convert from amp hours to watts there's actually a short form there's a long formula but there's a short formula and what you end up doing is you end up saying it's either you do a multiplication or division but depends where you go but it's the same thing so if you start for example and you have a hundred watt panel and you want to say how much of that panel is going to give me an amp hours you're actually going to multiply it by let's say a factor so watts times 25 percent is equal to what your daily amp power output is so for instance if you have 100 watt array you're gonna get 25 amp hours a day of solar panel and if you want to go the other way let's say you say Jeff and was on my vote Jeff can you help me Jeff I have a hundred a power output how big for my solar array B I multiply times 4 and I got a 400 watt array so on my boat I went bigger 450 so I have a 450 watt array and that meets my daily consumption in the summer of a hundred amp hours a day and on my boat in the summer from May to September here at this latitude in this part of the world I never have to plug into Shore power or run my alternator ever and I never have and I always have more power than I need every day my batteries are topped off from the Sun so that would be an end an extreme end would be meat daily output and then the other extreme would be I'm starting a solar and I just want to sleep and float maintain I had an owner just recently again saying you know what we don't have anything on our boat but we're gone in the wintertime and we just but we don't have a battery charger we're at a dock there's no power there and I want to be able to top off my batteries and flow charge them when we're not there even in the winter I'm like perfect we'll put a small solar array and will flow charge your batteries right and maintain them when there's no loads but if they had the refrigerator on then we'd have to make a much bigger array to offset refrigeration loads plus maintaining loads okay all right so the question is can you use a demon fire electric to run off solar you would need a pretty significant solar way to do that you know if you can't run solar to run a demon fire what do you do and you're right the best thing though I have to say in this cold climate where we are the biggest problem for mildew on our boats is not that the boats are too cold is there to warm people think that the higher the temperature the better the boat is it's the opposite you want just slightly higher than ambient just slightly the bigger the Delta the more your boat is going to sweat on the inside it's like the opposite think about a like saying a beer bottle and you think about those commercials or a can of coke in the summer and you see all that condensation right so you've got a cold beverage and a warm air surface that causes condensation and the wintertime on our boat our haul sweats like there's no tomorrow there's practically flooding in our boat if they're if the bilge your certain places where the water can't get in the bilge those be pools of water on our boat in different areas of our boat because the hall is sweating so much because again the inside of the boat is warm the water temperature might be 7 degrees 8 degrees Celsius 50 degrees Fahrenheit there's a delta between the inside cabin temperature and the water temperature and that Delta causes the boat to sweat so you never ever want to have your boat to be much warmer than the water temp just slightly but not a lot what is the rule of thumb for a 100 watt panel so 100 watt mono is going to be I know that offhand is typical is 42 inches by 21 inches that's a mono and a poly would be probably 26 by 42 another one to a really popular size is a hundred and seventy watt panel mono is sixty inches by twenty six and a poly panel of same size 60 inches by twenty six is 145 watt so you see how you same size now one is poly they're exactly the same size then obviously the mono will always have higher output because it's more efficient always in series like here you see how it's positive negative positive negative positive to negative the challenge with parallel is that remember like a battery you can add either voltages or current remember if you want them in series like we do the voltage increases but the apps stay the same until you get to the controller if you wire them in parallel the voltage are all the same but the ampacity and the abs coming down the wire increase and the challenge is then you have huge conductors leaving the solar panels so to keep the voltage cabling down right that cable solar panel cabling we do is we actually bring the voltage up offset voltage drop and then we don't have large cables leaving a surface area coming down and that's why we never wire anything in parallel we always wire them in series if at all a lot of cases we just wire them to dedicated controllers and I'm going to talk about that solar panels are a little bit like batteries they come in all different sizes and shapes at our shop we have 60 different panel sizes in stock and I don't have all the panels I only have a subset it's a little bit like Jenga like a Tetris you know they all are different rectangular sizes some some are square more rectangular than others and this is an example 170 150 you know 85-75 65 75 Q and that's just from one manufacturer one side line and as or mono and then every manufacturer has models and Pauli's and then so there's tons of choice and when you end up choosing a solar panel one of the criteria is is you do what you can right lay generally it's the first step is like all want solar give me a give me an estimate I'm like okay yeah all right but first more questions what do we have where are we gonna mount them how much space do you have we're gonna mount them on an arch are we gonna minimum the bimini are we gonna mount them on the surface on a clearly on your deck right are we gonna walk on them are we not gonna walk on them there's a lot of variables how much space you have do you have a power boat where you have a huge heart top right that's easier and I do that a lot do we have a huge Bimini do you take your baby on and off are we only working on the Dodger some owners are gonna put them like literally on the decks glue them on the decks we'll put them on the brow of powerboats get out on catamarans we did eight on a big can of around right on the brow you can walk on them there's so much choice because unfortunately with boats that's why there's not a boat there's how many different boat models there's no wide one-size-fits-all so you have to make a solution these are example of rigid panels rigid panels are about this thick over an inch you know an inch and a half thick and because the solar panels the flexible ones are about the thickness of a coin you end up spending at least 3 2 X cheep cheep 2 X you know the least expensive rigid to the least expensive flexible it's gonna be probably a factor of 2 and then it goes up but you can end up with let's say there's some high end for example german-made flexible solar panels that are 10 X of the cheapest you know panels that are made in Asia like it could be a 10x difference it's sort of like a car you can buy a car for close to you know 15,000 and you can buy a car for 200,000 and that's not the whole range that's just the ranges that I've heard from you know solar panels the same thing and depending on the manufacturers so when you buy solar panels think about this shorthand for real you do wattage divided by four to give you your daily amp hour estimate right so if you have a 200 watt solar array you will get 50 amp hours a day 50 amp hours to give you an example if you have a modest refrigerator on your boat and your sailboat and it's anywhere between 30 and 40 feet that's probably going to offset your refrigeration in British Columbia people don't realize we're actually better off in the summer than anywhere else well most places eight we're on the western side of a time zone which is really good the days that because of a latitude or longer so in British Columbia in the summer from May to June or not June but September your days are long and that longer output makes a really big difference if you have a boat in the Caribbean you'll never have a 16-hour day in the Caribbean anytime of the year on average is a 12-hour day in the summer here you could have a 17 hour day you know all daylight starts at 5 for sure 5 for sure we wake up at 5:00 every every morning every day I can tell you in the summer it's not dark at 5:00 it's starting to break and it can go up to 10 and the more north we go the better it is right but in the winter it's the exact opposite you end up paying for it the net effect is the same but here people only boat in the summer most of us and so solar gives us more output here in the summer so it's actually worse in the Caribbean because they don't have as long solar time now in the wintertime here it's abysmal and in the Caribbean it would be great in the winter time because the days are not much shorter in the winter versus the summer does that make sense I'm a good translator I grew up in a bilingual family so this is really good this is where I get to translate so what happens when drop droppings get on your solar panel thank you mom ah yeah so first of all is good question actually one thing is people are always worried about well what happens with my solar panels are they going to be gonna have to clean them all the time what happens with bird droppings seems valid question nothing could be further from the truth the reason is a solar panel is a completely perfectly smooth surface it's it's literally made of glass it's an epoxy our boat it seems almost intentional that birds are dropping like over d-day like it's an aerial bombardment on the decks like the whole boat is covered and we come to the boat where our heart drops we're like oh my god seriously like and we're looking around like it couldn't be worse and all our Bimini and Dodger is completely covered and there's never any droppings on the solar panels now how is that possible well what happens is that there are obviously droppings they're guaranteed gonna happen because it's on the canvas it's on the deck is there's nothing to stick to our decks are porous the you know the let's say the fabric that's holding the CL is porous it's it doesn't disappear but when it lands on a solar panel there's literally nothing to stuck to so it dries up and it probably just blows away I have never brushed my solar panels ever once ever because it happens and then there's it's such a perfectly smooth surface now you also have to be careful it's a little more like having a non-stick pan you don't buy a nonstick pan and start bringing a metal brush to it because the moment you do that you're gonna undo the benefit of it being perfectly smooth so when we wash our solar panel let's it because of Poland you know there's a month where our boat is where there's Poland everywhere in the air this sort of like everything is yellow yeah or cold us around here right or airplane you know the flow planes in coal harbour we just use a hose I've never touched them with a rag never did anything yeah so it's not enough to affect the cell because I mean you'd have to have a hell of a bird drop a dropping to affect the output okay okay so next we're going to talk a little bit about controllers there's two different types I've never installed a PWM controller in my life again sort of like a modified sine-wave these are about 20% inefficient and these are about 2% inefficient so if you buy a hundred watt solar panel and you install a PWM you've converted your hundred watt panel to an seventy eight wall panel by buying the least expensive controller you could buy of course it's half the price or a third of a price of another one but it won't make sense if you buy a quality panel to cheap out with a cheap controller I've never bought a PWM never installed one if you have an array with me there's no way I I would I would just not do it I would abstain I'd be like I can't do it I just won't do it it's silly I'm not gonna do it so we always do NP P T's they're way more efficient they cost more money but the advantage with MPPT is they allow for a higher input voltage which is really good when we wire them in series and also MPPT volt solar panels allow you to boost panel voltage some panel voltages are going to be only eight volts and you have a 12 volt battery so you need to boost the voltage other panels are going to be 22 volts you need to bring down the voltage at the end of the day an MPPT controller is going to convert the voltage for what the battery needs at that given moment and they're going to go through a three-phase absorption there another three-phase charging they're gonna go bulk absorption and float so it makes your soul so if your bodies are completely for example on my boat if I'm connected to shore power my solar panels are gonna sense that and they're not going to charge the batteries because it's sunny outside they're going to see the Sun they're gonna like okay I've got power available to do the batteries need it like a battery charger would or like an external regulator would it makes a decision on my boat I have six controllers six solar panels each controller is looking at the battery voltage and making its own decision of if it makes sense to charge the battery or not without a controller you would cook the batteries for sure because there's no such thing as a 12 volt solar panel and even if it's 12 volt 12 volts not a charging voltage so okay you make it 14 but sometimes your batteries don't want 14 14 we cook the batteries over multiple days so you can never ever ever connect a solar panel directly the batteries without a controller you need to always throttle output and the way the throttle output from the Sun is via a controller they come in all different sizes you've got to spec them out we do a lot of design for people in the United States and in Europe or even Asia and when we're doing our solar arrays and we're designing them well you know some people are having huge arrays 1200 Watts 1700 watts but then the panels and we've got to decide okay what controller are we gonna put on each panel or so there's no such thing as a magical controller does everything you buy a controller like you buy a battery for a purpose every controller has different specifications what are the maximum wattage coming in what's our maximum abbs coming in all these different features some are made just for lithium batteries some are made for a flooded lead-acid some have the option of programming inside so unfortunately nothing is easy and you need to do your homework in choosing the right controller for the right solar panel so make sure you buy an MPPT based on your battery voltage because a controller needs to know am I going to be charging a 24 volt battery or 12 volt battery what is the maximum array amperage what's the maximum array voltage and then also if I've got batteries that are a GM or Firefly wouldn't it be nice if I can go in there in the controller and say by the way here's a custom charge flow file and then you set everything you want and they can charge that battery exactly like you want it all right so don't go sort of one size fits all those sort of tailor to your batteries and you can do that with controllers one last point that's why on sailboats we end up a lot of times installing one controller per panel just because of shading issues if we're doing a big power boat and we're on a hardtop and there's going to be no shading then besides the high voltage I'm not might be doubling up panels I'm do more I could to put them all in one but I won't because I it's not an industrial application and I'm thinking about the owner or the technician that doesn't know better that's going to get electrocuted when he changes their solar controller one day so that's why I keep the voltages down but you could if there's no shading you could have as many panels as you want in series and then the controller would be able to handle that but then the voltages could be crazy right it could be 200 volts 300 volts but you wouldn't want to do that on a boat and then making sure that you configure I can't tell you how often people buy good gear but then they think it's just plug and play right so that's really essential is to have taking the time to configure the controller to do the right charge profile so these are again a summary of and notice this is a small controller a bigger controller right two panels in series this is 130 this is a 75 15 75 volts in 15 amps 100 volts ins 30 amps max any questions on solar in our climate with the amount of cloudiness that we have does that impact performance my number four is a realistic number in the summer I'm a geek I help justify my decisions I have a counter on my solar I quantify the daily output every day I put in an Excel spreadsheet I'm sort of like I'm challenged okay there's no doubt there's no doubt the output on good days when it's a clear blue sky I've seen higher than 2.65 so remember my four so my 450 water a gives me on average about 150 nap hours a day I've seen the number go like up to way above 150 commonly so that would be a factor of three I've seen a 170 amp hours on those beautiful blue days in June and July when the sky is perfectly blue like almost not it looks like it today actually outside I'll get way better output so for for me is a Optima not an optimistic is it sort of a realistic number in British Columbia in the summer between May and September now in the winter time forget about it I mean it's not the Sun is not up here it's down a bit there it barely gets over the horizon it's only sunny for eight hours and it's raining it's so like Noah's Flood yeah I'm in that point you've got everything against you the Sun is on the rise in the days short and you're like certain and this is that's it this is a time when everyone's gonna evacuate on a boat like there's gonna be flooding there's no way I mean on those days its factor of 10 what you do in the summer you know there's no way I mean it's just yeah we boat in the wintertime and soar does something but in December when we're out of Christmas the shortest day of the year that's it's negligible but you know what I was out in September late September and I got more output then I got a full day summers worth because it was a sunny day so the question is are rigid solar panels or flexible solar panels more efficient or less efficient than one another they're the same efficiency so if you buy a hundred watt mono rigid or 100 watt mono flexible they're going to be the exact same size the difference is price you're gonna pay way more money for the same quality by a multiple of if you go it's flexible so rigid is always less way less money then flex always okay so with that we're going to start with methanol fuel cell you might have heard of this for people they go offshore it's definitely not you know a perfect device far from it because the big problem would be where the hell are you gonna give the fuel this is more for coastal cruisers that don't have a generator on board have an alternator but the alternator is insufficient they can't put solar for whatever reason or they choose not to and this is a way to have effectively a battery charger and instead of that battery charger powered by AC which is your generator or Shore power or an alternator by the revolution of your engine right the crankshaft pulley this is actually powered by methanol and you can get those in different sizes physically they're about this big no this this narrow this high and then about this long they weigh about thirty pounds you can fit them in lockers as less there's a little bit of ventilation because they do create heat and they're gonna give you a daily output in 12 volts of either 80 amp hours a day 140 amp hours a day or 210 app hours a day you don't need to be connected shore power this fuel cartridge is about a thousand amp hours of power and this actually charges the battery and it senses when they need to be charged like your battery charger so it cuts itself on and off I even did an 85 foot power boat where we installed commercial units there's thousands of these units in Alberta in the old sound application so instead of doing telemetric data and running all their gear and having generators that would have to be serviced and fueled and everything else it's huge in the oil sector though installing methanol fuel cells we did a job once even for the Coast Guard for powering weather stations as a backup and so it's not an AC generator which is really important so it's can't run any AC loads you'll need an inverter for that it's not gonna run a dive compressor it's not gonna do any of your AC loads this is strictly a DC device like a battery charger and it's good for boaters that have a battery bank that can get bigger and they and they can't fit solar and they were thinking about a way to offset their loads and they want to stay at an anchorage for a longer period of time but that being said if you're gonna go boarding for 365 days a year for the next 10 years you're not going to do this because the fuel is going to be too expensive over time right you're gonna want to end up doing like some of my other motors which is getting a huge slower rate right like I'm preparing people to go offshore massive solar arrays right wind turbines because they're the problem is not only the money to buy the fuel but where are you gonna get it you're in the middle of nowhere you're going off grid this is better for coastal cruisers people that use their boat in the summer and they're sort of like deficient in their power but they want to have more power but they don't want to invest huge amount of money in a huge solar array and or they can't fit one in like there's boaters that don't like having a bimini they always take it off they'd like to be in the Sun well if you're a sailboat ER and you don't have a radar arch you don't have a Bimini where the hell are you gonna put solar panels I mean on the Dodger but that's not going to change your life two panels on a Dodger is not enough - it's gonna make a difference but it's not gonna change your world and so that might be an auction we've done a bunch of boats that will just say do races Vic Maui's or Transpac they'll do that instead of running the engine so they'll bring that on board and you know run all of the navigator to be sailing to Hawaii but it doesn't matter if you get a ye then eventually it'll turn around and they'll come back with a boat so that makes sense if they have enough fuel they're gone for 10 not 10 days but two weeks three weeks and so they'll have that on board as a way to run all their navigator without running the engine because they're sailing they're talked about the different sizes right what we do on our boat to offset the worry about not having enough fuel is I have a 210 model on my boat and I always carry two spare fuel cartridges I used about 2 to 3 fuel cartridges a year and so I have my years fuel supply on board at any given time so when I'm in I'm a prepper you know I'm ready like seriously there could be end of the world there like even my friends there's people have numbers there like we're just coming aboard your boat and we'll be fine while the world just falls apart I'm like yeah we're pretty good like the boat is all good and like you go on board we're in desolation Sound or in the middle of Anchorage we run out of methanol fuel Sal I'm not going oh my god where am I gonna get my next meal I'm like it's all good there's one canister with ready to be changed and after that one runs out I have another one and that's my fuel burn for the year so we always carry extra and those fuel cartridges are about this big they're 10 liters so it's not this big this big so it's a little bit bigger than a 4 gallon jar right in Canada about $85 less obviously in the States and a methanol fuel cell and Canadian is around 3,500 5,000 7,000 for each level you know 80 142 10 and that's in Canadian dollars obviously the exchange rate makes it less in the States some orders end up doing that because they changed boats frequently they'll change boats every three four or five years I've had some boats where we've changed that unit twice already sort of like a suitcase it's not Specht when they sell the boat and then we do buy another boat and we just put it on the other boat where do we mount the cell it can fit in a lot of places a lot of times like on my boat it's in the v-berth under the cabin forward cabin hatch I've done a bunch of sail boats hunters they're gonna be around the companionway table you know that you sette dining-table other owners I did a Beneteau we put it literally in between at the after boat a flock er like literally underneath the steering wheel almost you know between the port and starboard lazarette at the to the boat we put it there some people have these huge monstrous lazarette there are two cabin sailboats you know one cabin up front and only one cabin on the side and then they have this giant stowaway kind of like Locker that you can actually almost stand in we'll put it in there power boats we do a lot on trawlers like tons on trawlers and we'll put them in this settee you generally don't want to have it in the engine room because they don't like heat so if you have it in the engine room you can't be running it at the same time as your engine is running because this thing is going to over temp engine rooms can get really hot very hot like they get very hot so you generally now we've also installed them an engine room sometimes but we the cabinet it's the only place that fits and we say the owner don't run this when you're running your engine because when you're running engine you have your alternate anyways so it's sort of like you're double dipping oh absolutely the question is can you put it right beside a starter battery yeah that could be anywhere yeah and it's not hard to install it takes about a day you know like if you had it on the floor here would take an hour joke not even 20 minutes on a boat is just running the wires between different battery banks where is this going to be installed to where it's going and then from the control panel because you have a control panel you can turn it on or off you can have it automatic and it off you can have it on so it's not that big in on this big 85 footer we did we installed two commercial units they were about this big and a lot of owners actually end up taking out their generators it's a huge generator replacement in this climate we're lucky we don't have we have summers without heat I mean if you've lived in the eastern seaboard or other places there's crazy amount of heat and so a lot of boaters here don't need a generator for running air conditioning and so that the generators don't run that often and when they become problematic the only reason they run their generator is to recharge the batteries that's it it's just to make hot water and run the Chargers and so if your generator is giving you a lot of grief than what people end up doing is they say screw it with a generator take it out and then we end up putting a methanol fuel cell obviously I fraction of the weight one fifteenth of the weight one tenth of the size again I mean a generators you know inside a boat is always at least this big and bigger and this thing is again only about this big and it weighs only thirty pounds or something so it's very light the question is there an intake and exhaust yeah absolutely if there's an intake at the front and there's an exhaust in the back it it's it produces the same amount of carbon dioxide as a cat breathing so people ask me all the time they're like oh but you know if if I'm in a closed cabin space and this thing is working I'm gonna die I'm like if you're in that space - and you're in a fridge and you close the door you're gonna die as well like and it makes the vibe this the noises again cat 21 decibels it's a cat purring you have to concentrate to hear it the question is you have to vent it out absolutely not no no not all another question yeah the point is the same thing on our v-berth in this summer in the winter not so much because the hall it's cooling constantly and inside of the boat but in the summer when it's really warm and if we have our methanol fuel cell on we'll have to make sure there's enough ventilation in that sort of cupboard that is enclosed it's pretty big but if it's not big enough at one point it does create heat and if something else is creating warmth it doesn't like it question was why do I have an e for if I have so much solar panels it's really good question and it's a simple one i boat all year around I'm an on recovering boat alcoholic there is not a day in the winter where if I I go we we spend two weeks of Christmas on the boat I can spend five days in December I could spend January a whole week on the boat I generally get more boating time in the winter when other people aren't voting just because there's less phone calls that's less crazy for work and in the wintertime the solar panels are just not outputting anything that's reasonable and in the winter time remember what I talked about the battery consumption earlier and I said there's a difference between making consumption and at Anchorage consumption well here in British Columbia would be you know there's a difference between being using your boat in the summer in the winter in the wintertime your amp our consumption goes way through the roof because you're trying to heat up the boat and you're heating up the boat with diesel right but the circulation of that heat either through you know forced air or coolant comes at a high at DC lows way more surpassing your refrigerator loads and so in the wintertime you'll draw way more power than you will in the summer like in the original time I'm probably drawing over 250 300 half hours a day at Anchorage in the middle of nowhere without connected to shore power because the lights are on from you know five o'clock you know until bedtime you want to keep the boat warm and it's you know maybe only five six seven ten degrees outside and to make everyone happy in the boat we're running in the daytime anywhere between 18 and 21 C there is a reasonable question there would be an e for a good way to recharge a dedicated battery for the winless it would be an overkill you would end up buying what's called a DC to DC charger and get a charge that is only that can actually recharge that battery from another battery source is how I would do it this is way too expensive there's ways of doing it at one thirtieth of the price of that so there's no need AC and DC generators I'm trying to differentiate between the two on the left hand side this is what this is how the magic of your AC generator recharges your battery and on the right hand side if you had a DC generator it's what it looks like one of the hardest and best part of my job is to remotely help voters in the middle of nowhere solve problems it's both the hardest thing I do and it's also the most rewarding thing I do and that's where I sort of learn all my experience you know solving problems can't sit on the side and when we have a boarder that calls in and says my batteries are not charging when I'm running my generator and he has an AC generator Exhibit A on the left hand side is the things that need to work for that to happen and if he had a DC generator or she you look at exhibit Bravo on the right hand side much more straightforward right so if you have an AC generator on your boat or a shore power for that matter this is generally well especially with generator because you know you're going to have a source selector switch you've got a generator connect to a source selector switch and that source selector switch has to exist because your boat is either powered by a seashore or generator so you have to have that that's this big single point of failure happens all the time and over time they wear out then it's got to go to an AC panel the AC panel has got to get all the thing there's also a breaker on that charger on that AC generator goes to source selector go step panel panel goes to a converter which is now called the battery charger and the battery charger goes to multiple batteries through fuses you can see there's a lot of steps here so that's effectively how your AC generator recharges your battery not to be confused with this small little tiny alternator that's inside that device that is only ever ever connected to the dedicated generator battery okay alternate generators also have alternators but they're puny and tiny and they're only meant to recharge the battery that started the generator you would never ever ever ever use that bad alternator to recharge a deep-cycle battery bank it would be on forever and even on forever you would never be able to meet the loads I mean they're outputting like 10 apps 10 abs is what most of us use for power it would never be enough to recharge a battery bank it's only meant to recharge a battery that started the generator okay any questions on this before we take a break I just want to show it in case any of you have an AC generator source selector switches can come in like those throw switches and other ones are the sort of a little breaker thing that you can't only turn one source at a time yeah but your per course which is different that's a DC one that's not an AC one yeah it's a cross Newman it's a German switch they're very expensive and sometimes they're like double pole breakers and you have a little slider I don't know if some of you been on Bay liners for example they have that they don't have big source selector switches they'll have little sliders and you can only select one thing at a time you know it forces you you can't because you don't want to have your generator and your shore power at the same time together powering your boat because then it would be a very eventful memorable moment yeah that's right that's another way of doing a surf selector yeah that's making sure that you only have one source coming - yeah and on some boats like we were on a boat the other day you know had two generators to shore right for Shore offshore right and then generally to one January through two and on another big boat it was three generators you know after one aft to forward one for two and then there's three generators on board night gen 2 de gens right and never ends there's just always more stuff the the question is those little Honda portable generators they were never meant to go on a boat ever just so you know they actually don't they're not grounded believe it or not you're going back to like Edison days the invention of electricity to wire systems 100 year old homes like circa before not this century not the last one but the one before that you're on a two wire system so the lights on your panel the reverse polarity is because there's no ground it's floating I reversed polarity light works by measuring a differential between a ground and a neutral that's how it does it's very simple just a light and a neutral ground should be bonded at the source of power ie connected and if they're bonded they're gonna be no like the lights going to be simply nothing because they're both have the same potential same voltage you can't connect two things to the same play and have any power difference right but when you what they're looking for reverse polarity they're looking to have some sort of voltage on the neutral and the neutral on the ground should never be different they should be the same so as soon as the light starts riding up a little bit it senses that you might have voltage on your neutral which you shouldn't you can't it's supposed to be bonded to your ground what happens with the Honda generator is that the ground is not neutral it's floating and your neutral coming in is not bonded so the light is just looking at the differential between the neutral in the ground and since they're not common that light might become not so bright but bright enough that it thinks that you've got a reverse polarity what it means is you're on a floating ground system no it's not you it's you can't use that notice the problem is you can't use those Honda generators on a boat you should not use those Gerry's it's not safe you're on a two wire system if you ever have a short like like it's like saying to your electricians you know this whole thing about three wires and grounds I don't believe in it I'm thinking we're gonna save a wire and we're gonna just go two wires through the house and I like antique the problem is the generator the generator is not grounded it's floating you're holding it in your hands it's in a briefcase not a not a not a not a suitcase one I know and you know what I did the exact same area you did when I bought my boat I have a Honda 2000 generator and I discovered it the hard way in 2006 I bought one too and I was like well is that and then was asking questions nobody had answers and I started going down the rabbit hole and I haven't used my Honda generator since inside the shop waiting for whenever we're gonna lose power on land yeah
How To: Marine Electrical Seminar
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