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[Music] morning everyone good morning thank you for a Bluewater cruising Association for hosting this event so this is a high-level view of what we're gonna be talking today we're gonna be talking about the storage of energy what is that batteries on boats right we're gonna be talking about how do you generate power we're you know because it was one thing to have batteries but you got to replenish those batteries and then how do you share power between different devices on your boats because we have sometimes multiple battery banks maybe an engine battery in a house battery bank and then we're going to talk about monitoring the batteries like how do you make sure that you have what you think you have we're going to talk about also distribution distribution is also important how do you figure how do you get the power from the batteries out and then I want to talk a little bit about galvanic protection and then also as a precursor to tomorrow the importance about fusing I've got some videos on fusing and I'm going to be talking about that as well okay so the big concept that we're gonna be talking a lot and I'm gonna be mentioning this and there's the art of repetition until it sinks in there's no tests but there should be alright we're gonna be talking about this concept here an undisturbed adder can be made of one or ten or twenty batteries I've done a we did a big boat recently we had 32 batteries on board there is no limit other than budget and space on a boat for batteries right but in this conceptual diagram I'm showing a house battery and we're going to be talking about this concept of what's a none switch distribution and unwished distribution means everything before the switch meaning is always on there's always a connection to the battery even when you turn that battery switch off like for example a bilge pump in a boat in your boat no matter if you turn that battery switch off if your boat was wired to code and done properly and that's a big if if right as we all know it's a big if if if your boat is wired properly you're gonna actually be able to turn your battery switch off and your bilge pump should still be working your bilge pumps are connected to what's called an undisturbed on your boat and then after that you have what's called the switch distribution meaning let's say for example your DC panel if you turn your battery switch off your DC panel goes dead okay and so we're gonna be talking a lot about that and this is where things are magical on boats like the whole sort of mystery of boating happens because people don't distinguish between unswept and switch distribution and that's going to be a big takeaway today is where should my connection go is it unswept or switch and if you don't care well welcome to the world of magic and it's a scary place I can tell you I get phone calls all the time and people like it doesn't make sense I'm like you're right it doesn't make sense and it's not you it's the electrical system on your boat you're absolutely right your expectations are banging off your boat is simply not giving you what normal should be and so we're gonna actually review every single one of those items one at a time today and I'm gonna be presenting that picture as we go along so it's gonna make more and more sense okay the previous slide was about DC distribution direct current this is alternating current what we have here in the room is pretty much all alternating current except our phones those are DC right there working off batteries and we've got an example I mean they get calm more complicated on a big 80 or 90 or 100 or 150 footer but up to maybe 60 70 feet it's pretty much this just maybe more devices but it's just more of the same so you've got a short power cord you might have a source selector switch if you have a generator you might not like on my sailboat I don't have a generator so I don't have a source selector switch it powers my panel and then my panel if you have an inverter has a sub panel and that sub panel might be just part of the same panel you're thinking oh it's one well no it's in the back the magic is it's separated and then you're looking at certain items that are basically only run from shore power generator and then items that might be just or loads that might be running off of invar or power for example a hot water tank is not going to be powered by an inverter you can't I get that question all the time it's sort of like you could warm your house with dollar bills or $20 bills literally putting them as logs in the fireplace you could do it but it would not be wise decision and you'd burn through money very quickly same thing with creating heat through batteries is a really showstopper there's no single boat that I've ever seen that actually is able to generate heat from their batteries well they can for an hour or two you can but then you have no more batteries like you can literally burn money for heat but then you have no more money and that's the rate at which you would burn energy if you were trying to heat your boat or hot water tank with an inverter but a really good example would be let's think about a microwave or an AC outlet how common is it on a boat to have an AC outlet that you can actually plug in could be anything could be your laptop it could be I don't know it could be an espresso machine it could be whatever you want and have that AC outlet be energized by an inverter or also powered through a short power or generator so we'll talk about all those so I'm giving you sort of a little bit of an overview or we're gonna go today and at the end of the day we're gonna revisit those diagrams and we're gonna revisit them as we go along and it's gonna start making more and more sense okay taking away that magic that's the whole goal the mystery of electrical systems all right with that we're gonna get started with batteries the heart of your electrical system marine batteries come in all different shapes and sizes basically that's an image to show you that there's a lot of different batteries out there there's no such thing as a marine battery it's like there's no such thing as a car we conceptually can visualize what a car is but there's no car it's cars or collection of different devices that are pretty much similar and a battery is the same thing obviously they're gonna have it positive and negative but you can buy a battery in 4 volts you can buy a battery that is 6 volts you can buy a battery there's 12 volts right you can buy a battery that is different chemistry like our cars a lot of cars are gonna have flooded lead-acid batteries some cars have AGM some boats have a GM AGM stands for absorbed glass mat battery so batteries come in all different sizes and chemistry's from all different manufacturers all built for a different purpose and what we're gonna be talking about in this first part of the course is let's make sense of all your choices so an engine battery is used to start the engine or another really good application is running a thruster on a boat right a thruster and a starter a very similar high amount of current draw for a very short period of time right so think about in your mind and I always use batteries are so similar to us people humans it's uncanny and think about a sprinter would be a starter battery so you think about an athlete that does 100-meter dash and how that athlete can't run a marathon they're just not one in the same they're both humans one is made for speed i short bursts of energy right and they build a crazy amount of power very very quickly and a marathon runner they're both extreme athletes the other one is long duration he's not running for 10 seconds now they're doing two hours two hours and ten minutes two hours and five minutes for a marathon completely both incredible athletes built for different purpose okay so a thruster is another example starter batteries are never meant to be lift left in a discharged state meaning once you have a big load on a starter battery you need to worry about how am I gonna replenish that battery our cars do that every time you start your car as soon as the engine starts the alternator starts turning the alternating starts turning basically produces DC power DC power goes to your engine battery and it recharges your engine battery but if you start your engine and you don't have an alternator working and you keep doing that your battery is gonna sulfate and sulfate is codeword for it's gonna die prematurely all batteries sulfate what you're trying to do is you're trying to prevent aging right you're trying to keep that battery as young as possible for as long as possible and the other point that's very important and I can't emphasize this enough and this is the world of experience is that batteries are built for a purpose and you are tempting fate if you try to have a starter battery do a deep cycle application about 6 to 12 times a year I have a phone call from a boater that had a battery explode in their engine room generally it's a new to them boat or a recently purchased boat used and what happened was someone was inclined to cut costs because starter batteries cost less than deep-cycle batteries and someone noticed that their batteries were dead and when they came to the battery store they were given a choice either buy something for X or buy something for 2x and in the spirit of saving money because they're trying to get rid of the boat and they don't know the choices that they make because ignorance is bliss they buy the least expensive battery and they put it in a deep cycle application and sure enough a year or two later you're using a deep set you're using a starter battery and a deep cycle application and those are not the same thing remember think about a sprinter and a marathon runner they're not the same athlete at all and that battery will most likely explode in your engine room I've had stories of hatches blowing up off the engines sulfur ik acid everywhere in the engine room and an engine remember is a place where there's a lot of metal and sulfuric acid eats through metal so it's a world of hurt it's a pretty sad day I mean it's a very sad day and that's just because someone cut corners they didn't know what they're doing I don't think anybody would intentionally do this right nobody's going ha you know I'm gonna put a poison pill on the boat they just simply don't know because there's so much choice and it's hard you know and so as an owner of a boat I always encourage when I do electrical audits I always encourage owners I say hey make sure your battery is what you think it you know and they look the same right that's the hard part they both look the same but the inside is completely different so really emphasize if you have deep-cycle batteries on your boat do you right are they is the boat relatively recent to you and who changed those batteries and where you so cost-conscious which is a great thing we have to because boats are expensive has we all know they're very expensive to maintain did somebody make a decision that didn't understand the implications of that choice and that's something to think about and for starter batteries you measure their capacity in what are called cold cranking amps right their ability to give amperage for a very short period of time so this is an example of an 8 D battery a flooded lead-acid battery right here okay rolls is a great company out of Nova Scotia they're literally the rolls-royce of batteries it's I know it's a coincidence of the name but their top tier battery deep cycle batteries look at that choice crazy amount of choice so deep cycle batteries or batteries that we use to run lights our water pump even an inverter we're gonna use those batteries nav lights stereo navigation equipment you think about it anything outside of running your engine should be on a house battery and those are deep cycle batteries they're meant and I want to emphasize like a marathon runner think about it those batteries are meant you know they might be discharging and we'll talk about that later they might be discharging your batteries for some people don't recharge their batteries for three days on the hook right they get to a destination and they're gonna leave their batteries be discharged for a three-day period and then they're gonna run it so for three days that battery is discharging slowly but for three days and then after three days it's gonna start getting a charge and their capacity and this is very important the unit of measure for deep cycle batteries is something called an amp hour now that's confusing welcome to the club I remember graduating from University by the way none of this made sense and I did a full electrical design degree honestly you go through the motions and you're like oh I got it I'm so good and then you own a boat and you're like oh my god oh my god I remember we were boating and I had a friend of mine because I mean obviously you go to school so you make friends in your class he was an electrical expert and he had a master's and we were completely useless I mean helpless it was pathetic it was so humbling let me tell you the ladies on board we're having a blast they're like all this education you guys think you're so smart you can't figure a starter circuit yeah that was a waste of time well the reality is it's humbling for everyone in hindsight you're like wow this is really hard and one of those things that's really hard is this concept of an ant power like what the hell is an AM power well you've got to go back and you've got to think about this concept of an amp an amp is a little confusing because what we don't realize is it tells us of the rate at which something is going it's similar to speed like kilometers per hour or gallons per minute it's flow if in it is instantaneous there's no such thing as what is it's an amp over a period of time is going to give you the distance that travels so when you think about the word kilometers per hour think about the word speed an amp is synonymous with the word speed if I say to you for example I'm going 10 kilometers hour how much how much distance did I travel well the only way to know that is telling you how long I traveled because you don't know how long I track how far traveled without the other element which is time and so what they do to show the distance right the unit of measure that is not over time but is slowing like a kilogram a kilometer whatever it is is an amp hour that means at a certain rate for example if you're drawing a water pump is drawing 10 amps for an hour you're gonna draw 10 amp hours right so an amp is really synonymous with speed and that is those two words are used interchangeably all the time although they're completely different units so think about that when you're thinking about things quantities and powers the rate at which you are discharging something the moment is amps and batteries are quantified because it has to be there's no speed in a battery it's about how much energy does it hold and that energy is called an amp power and you'll see all of this is relevant later okay in case you're thinking of glazing over and falling asleep I know it's a little bit tedious but it's definitely worth it so you're thinking about this and you're saying okay when I'm buying a light acid batteries I really have sort of two choices am I gonna do traditional which is a flooded lead-acid battery which is pretty much familiar to all of us and these are batteries that you have to top off the fluid but if you drill the hole in the bottom of the battery the electrolyte would actually leak out right it's sulfur acid inside a battery and that electrolyte if you topped it over or you put it sideways it's like a container or a glass of water it needs to be upright right because it's a flooded lead-acid battery there's another type of lead acid battery that is very popular and those are called Thiel valve regulated batteries as VR for short of course there's acronyms everywhere and the first of those batteries that was sort of commercially available was what's called a gel battery and gel batteries didn't do too well in the market because they were very particular in their charging rhythms or what their requirements were and then a replacement for that or another seal valve regulated battery is a battery call than absorbed glass mat battery an AGM boaters are commonly going to refer to AGM batteries as gel what they mean to say is it's a seal valve regulated battery and since the first battery to come out that would seal valve was gel they're using gel as sort of a descriptor for all batteries that are seal valve regulated out of a hundred motors maybe one of us is gonna have a gel battery and generally it's because you have a tiara and that's it other than that you never encounter a boat with gel batteries anymore super rare they're great batteries but they're very fussy so there's no downside to gel other than they're really fussy AG ends are a little bit more - under charge over charge and they're gonna be easily we can replace them we can actually put them in boats where they had flooded and we don't have to get an external regulator we'll talk about that it's less complicated and hence most borders that we deal with I'd say about 80% in the end end up going with AGM and about 20% have flooded lead-acid batteries and another one - now another variation is the carbon foam AGM which is the Firefly battery we'll talk about that as well so here are the different sort of things you've got to think about when you're thinking about flooded one is think about this dollar sign it's going to be sort of your form meaning you can't get a better deal per battery initially than a flooded lead-acid battery no doubt if price is king and you don't care about life and don't care about a lot of variables there's nothing that can beat the low cost of a flooded lead-acid battery the other thing - that's really important is that flooded lead-acid batteries because they can leak and they will leak they will sweat at their end of life and that end of life varies depending on how you abuse the batteries it could be within two years one year it could be up to ten years if your baby them they will leak and if you don't have a battery box you're in a whole world or hurt because that acid will never evaporate will never sort of disappear it's gonna be there we're just waiting to hit some sort of metal and I've seen grown men cry I've seen keel boats on boats where the two the last two sets of keel boats were gone because the bilge it was a dry bilge and the sulfuric acid made it to the last two keel boats and the two keel boats were completely vaporized because the sulphur Cassidy went through them so battery box is very important for flooded lead-acid and you need to maintain them I have boaters that are very determined their way is the right way and I tell them if you don't top off your flooded lead-acid battery we're gonna see each other a lot more frequently than we need to and they're like I don't need to maintain my flooded lead-acid battery because that's how I've been doing it I said yes but that's why we see you every second year I mean we've got a good relationship but hey maybe every five six seven eight years you know it's expensive to change batteries because your time right and then you got to go buy them put them back in and then your batteries fail so maintenance of distilled water on a flood a lot acid is very important I was on a boat just recently the inverter stopped working so first call is my inverse death coming to replace it come with a new inverter sure enough we come on the boat the batteries that we're powering the inverter were flooded lead-acid battery the owner didn't even know he had them never had maintained them the batteries are dead dead they're about 750 apiece there was for $3,000 that's an ouch that's gotta hurt I don't care how deep your pockets are that's gotta hurt three grand and that's three grand capital costs that's not your time to go get the batteries putting them in and having us come to the boat with an inverter realizing that the inverter won't work it's not because it's an inverter problem it's a battery problem and it's not a battery problem it's because literally you didn't feed the cat the cat didn't die you decided to not feed the cat right and then the order is like sort of embarrassed and I'm like well it's actually not that embarrassing it happens a lot more than you think but know where your batteries are you know do they need love and and and a big and by the way a really big em it's like every single cell the one cell that goes takes a whole battery bank down so if you've got a battery bank where some of the cells are hard to reach and you don't like it and you're like well I got eight out of ten cells I mean this pretty damn good I'm close well no it's actually you better save your time because those two that don't getting love are gonna die when they die they're taking everyone down it's so like a grenade so you got to maintain every single cell every single one of them got to have equal love and that is a big burden for a lot of voters and when Nigel Calder was here recently a few years ago he said flooded lead-acid batteries don't die they get murdered and he's absolutely right absolutely 100% right now some of us are super diligent with maintenance you know it's religion it's sort of like you're just doing it ritualistic you're always going to follow up on your mainland schedules the people's don't have flooded alive acid battery can give you a good life if you keep up to the contract of maintaining your batteries and the other point two is that they discharge about 15% per month so meaning if you've got about and this is really big - if bulk range this is huge huge I can't emphasize that enough if you a flooded lead-acid battery has only about 1/3 of its battery capacity that is usable 1/3 I have people that say to me and say wow Jeff your battery banks are ridiculous why do you exaggerate I'm like exaggerate it's math there's no exaggeration everything is calculated there is a method to this science and so if you have a 600 amp hour battery bank when you're actually using your boat and you're out cruising you're only going to be using 1/3 of that battery bank meaning you need 3 times the battery bank that you need with flooded lead-acid batteries that's the ratio think about batteries are a little bit like you and I our ancestors you go back a thousand years 700 years I don't think my ancestors had any different DNA than I did we're pretty much identical life expectancy was about 25 years 30 years if you were lucky now why they had a hard life they were working there's no nine-to-five there's no Monday to Friday there's no you're out for survival you're fighting the fight every day and if you treat your batteries and they need to do crazy work days imagine if you have to work 21 hours a day seven days a week you're not gonna make it to 80 there's no way you're gonna kill yourself it'd be crazy and we ask batteries we say two batteries you say oh by the way I really don't care what you need I'm gonna work you so hard but then when you die is like a horse when you die too prematurely I'm gonna be really upset at you for not giving me the life that I expect out of you life expectancy is a function and a direct function of the depth of discharge of your batteries there's no other way around it how deeply you discharge those batteries and the number of times you do it will affect your battery life so that's super important and that's how you get to 200 amp hours of usable ie a ratio of one to three so you want 600 you better buy three times it's what you would thought you need it originally and that's why the battery banks for flooded lead-acid batteries are really big on the corollary that's why a lithium battery banks are much smaller because 80% of the battery is usable right 80% with lithium is readily usable and that's why people are spending big bucks on lithium because it's a way to have higher energy density okay so this is an image of a flooded lead-acid battery you can see there's three cells three posts that you can actually top off each cell is about 2.2 volts and that's how you get a 6 volt battery gel batteries costs about twice the amount of a flooded lead-acid battery the electrolyte is in a gel State so can't leak you can shoot it with a gun you could drill in it it's literally like jello it's a seal valve regular battery we talked about that earlier it's no maintenance is required and that's a big one a lot of people have a lot of promises in their lives a lot of problems that a lot of promises are also unkept we do that to ourselves we do to our partners we do a children we do to our friends or family but a battery is an unforgiving creature she doesn't care what your excuses are you could have the longest list you want but it will never care what your excuses are you have to maintain that contract and a gel battery a seal valve regularly a battery does not need to be topped off hence why it's really convenient because there is no contract you put it in and you don't have to give it any love until it dies it's other than charging but big caution and I put that in red man there's stories online before my time of people putting gel batteries and not thinking about the alternator and the battery charger and after a week the batteries are dead and remember they pay twice the price of a flooded you can imagine how that hurts so he would go to West Marine go to battery shop buy the best put it in drop replacement a week later the battery is completely toast because gel batteries are very susceptible to overcharging their charge profile is much less than a flooded by the acid battery and so that's why it's generally you never see it because it means you need to have a holistic approach annalistic approach on a boat is a pretty big objective most people replace things in singular devices and they're not looking at the big picture so it was just not it's just not easy for a general boater to put gel in a boat notice here that's a really good - is they discharge only about 2% a month so some boaters have their boats on mooring boys or in hangars and they don't have a battery charger or they're not on the boat all the time and they can't charge their batteries like we did all of DFO's fleet we change all their batteries the Department of Fisheries and Oceans we depart we change all their batteries to flooded because they their boats were in storage areas hangars and they couldn't put them on Chargers and when they would show up to the boat if they had a flooded lead-acid battery that battery would discharge about 15% a month same thing with think about my folks they have a place a little place in Florida and in the summer there's someone that drives our car every sort of once a month if you don't drive your car for six months like we see in those zombie movies the car won't start if it hasn't been run in six months you're not gonna have any battery it's done the cars dead so if you don't use your car for a year you don't go to your car and say all great I'm gonna start it the car needs to be started because the battery needs to be topped off because it's a flooded lead-acid battery and that's why people you see cars in storage areas that have a little solar panel on top of a tarp they're trying to maintain the battery because nobody's driving their car once a month and here's the reason why people do gel is because what you see isn't what you get it gets fifty five percent of the usable battery capacity remember flooded was thirty five so now what that means is that you only need a four hundred and property bank to give you two hundred amp hours you see how energy density becomes that plate so that's why you can either have more usable capacity with the same batteries or have less batteries and have the same usable capacity so we'll have boaters that come to me and say Jeff I need more power on my boat but I can only because of physical limitations and we all do doesn't big I don't care how big your boat was I was under 90 foot or two weeks ago it was jam packed to the rafters I mean that boat was packed and you 125-foot er it's packed you get on a 30-footer it's packed you get on a 60 footer its back every single boat is packed to the rafters with stuff and so it's not like oh yeah look I have a room that's completely empty let's put stuff on it now every boat is packed and the challenge as boarders is well I want more capacity but where am I going to put that extra capacity my battery bank is this maybe I'll that too but some can't even add to they have the space they have for their batteries and so what you end up doing is you say okay I'm going to spend more money for batteries so that I can with the same amount of batteries have more usable battery capacity and it's a trade-off and people that have lithium do the same thing they're saying I have so much little space on my boat that I am willing to pay a huge premium for power because I have no other choice so that happens as well and that's the choice that all of us have is how much are you willing to pay more for that space premium and think about I always give the analogy and I'm thinking about in the city you build high-rises right in the suburbs you build ranchers right space is not at a premium far far away from a city but in the downtown you build high and that high comes with looking at more energy density per footprint higher batteries ways to limit the footprint of your battery bank AGM battery stand for absorbed glass mat batteries and this is sort of there's really two big choices in the marine world right now and it's either AGM or flooded lithium of course is a player but you need to have the money to afford it and you need to be committed but we definitely do a Philippian as well it's just a little bit of rare and the electrolyte is in a glass map so it can't leak which is great very limited gassing it's maintenance-free there's no top off right there's no maintenance of the battery you can't add any electrolyte you don't have to do that which is great self discharge is also very low like gel which is what we thought because it's also a seal valve regulated battery the capacity is similar to gel it's also 55% and again with AGM you can actually get 55 percent of the battery is usable capacity and again he you could get away with only a 400 amp hour battery bank to get 200 amp hours of usable that's one of the main differential reasons when I start explaining to boaters their choice and they come to me and say Jeff help me choose a battery bank for my boat give me an indication there's so much choice I don't know where to go and I say well listen there's there are implications you don't just pay more money for the same thing nobody wants to do that nobody wants to pay the exact same device for more money but when we look for cars we don't shop for a car strictly based on price we're looking what are the features I get with that car it's age its whatever how it drives is a sports car is it a sedan you're looking at all these different variables and you're going yeah that's worth it to me at the price that I'm gonna buy same thing we did with our boats none of us is going out and buying a boat strictly based on price I mean otherwise we just shop through Craigslist sort it lease expensive and we'd all be looking for the bargain boat and trust me there is no bargain at $0 with a boat as we all know there are no deals save me my battery so you've got to think about the value really essential so this is an AGM battery really popular line a lifeline you'll notice there's no electrolyte to be topped off so Firefly batteries are now three times the price right a flooded lead-acid battery is one dollar and a Firefly batteries gonna be three times the price all the benefits of AGM which is you know leak proof so you don't need a container maintenance-free doesn't vent and also it gives you faster recharge rates which is really important for people that are trying to condense their charge time on a boat this happens with motors that have fast boats or sail boaters that are trying to sail but the big thing is it's 12 times the life cycle of flooded I joke around and I say it's a family heirloom you'll pull in your will it's sort of like Johnny you're gonna have my batteries on my boat when I go 20 years 30 years from now your sister can have mums necklace you'll get the Firefly back those batteries will outlast most of all our love for a certain boat 12 times is in the land of the ridiculous it's like living a thousand years at one point you're like I can go like I don't need to stick around that long and that's one of the big advantage of the Firefly the other really big thing is this depth of discharge so with Firefly now you can go all the way down to 20% of capacity like lithium the difference with lithium is lithium the top end is also available from a hundred to twenty is lithium with carbon foam AGM you go from 85 to 20 and now you're 65% of the battery bank is usable and that's also how you get a huge amount of usable capacity in a small footprint we do go where we ended up putting 32 because the owner didn't want to have to worry it was an 85 footer and they're like I don't want to worry about power I'm tired running the generator all the time it drives us crazy and I want to be able to run from you know 8 o'clock at night to 9 o'clock in the morning have everything on and not have to worry about it and we did that before that was impossible with flooded and we didn't add more batteries on the boat we just changed the batteries to a firefly battery yes the cost is much higher but it works hope is not a strategy with batteries yes of questions the question is can you mix and match an old battery with a new battery and in the past you wouldn't have done that with AGM or gel because the life cycle was so short that after a year or 2 years the batteries would already be in a different stage right you know there's just there already so different that it's going to be uneven and you're gonna waste a new battery and it's gonna be a waste of money but with Firefly if the life cycle is 3600 right cycles if you're bringing a battery and you only use it 50 what's 50 on 3600 it's a rounding error so with Firefly batteries unless you've cycled them so intensely some owners are saying you know what I'll do X this year and next year if I only use my boat and I'm only cruising slightly and I'm not cruising every day bring my batteries down every day next year I've only been on the boat for 50 nights 50 nights on 3600 is inconsequential so that's where the law of not adding batteries to an existing bank can be changed because the life duration is so bored Nickolas that you can get away with it and we do that so now think about it now you only need a 300 amp hour battery bank to do 200 usable of battery capacity and that's a big deal so they come in either 12 volts or 4 volts so when we do the big tall ones we have to buy them obviously in threes or if we go to 24 volts we buy them in six sort of like when you think about a golf cart battery nobody buys a single golf cart battery there's no such thing you can't at 6 volts you're not gonna go somewhere and say I'm buying a 6 volt battery they're like well what are you gonna run with 6 volts nothing runs at 6 volts right so you have to always buy a pair and then you wire them in series to make a 12 volt battery so these batteries here need to be bought in threes and these batteries are 12 and they can be bought in singles or if you have a 24 volt bank like I was doing an electrical survey the other day and the thruster is running on 24 volts you can't buy a 24 volt battery bank you buy two twelves you put them in series or you buy for four sixes and you do 24 but you got to get yourself to that voltage so this is an example of 6 v and notice here that's sort of like that would be called parallel right so all the negatives are together that's all parallel all the positives are together right and then the negative comes on one end and the positive on the other one so that's six batteries that are about 110 112 amp hours in parallel for a 660 amp hour battery bank at 12 volts right and that's a distinction to remember people say to me and I get this all the time by the way there's no such thing as a silly question but people all the time tell me oh I've got to golf car batteries they're out there each 220 amp hours and I have two on my boat I have a 440 amp hour battery bank I'm like yeah I wish us well it'd be great but you can't add voltage and amp hours otherwise it's a miracle and let's be honest I'm not hoping for miracles a lot in my life but it's ain't going to happen and so you can't add voltage and amp hours if the voltage stays the same then the amp hours keep adding but if you start adding the voltages then the amp hours are gonna stay the same so think about this like two golf carts and series are going to be six volt plus six volts equals 12 volts the amp hour is still a 220 amp hour battery bank right same thing with you had four golf carts in series to make 24 it's 220 amp hour 24 volt battery bank or battery in this case not a bank because it's still made of only one battery made of four batteries in a series so I even see manuals and books actually believe it or not I was on a boat just recently in September where the manual actually the Builder was confused they were actually confused they were saying that each battery was they actually had doubled the amp hours capacity on the boat now realizing that you can't add voltages and amp hours you got to choose one otherwise it's pure magic and there is no such thing alright so what you've got to ask yourself when you're sizing a battery bank on your boat you got to ask yourself and people have you know people come to me all the time they're like so I need a battery bank Jeff how much I like oh well let's go down the rabbit hole together it's like how much to remodel a kitchen well it depends all right we're gonna have to start asking questions there's not a single solution for every one of us otherwise it'd just be a manual it'd be the Bible here you go build your boat according to everyone would do the same thing but with boats everything is sort of custom it's different so the first thing you've got to ask yourself you've got to figure out what your daily and power requirements are cinnamon a little bit too I'm thinking about my mother was so good with money so good she was so frugal she was amazing and she said well you're gonna go traveling what is good you spend every day on the trip what's your daily what's your daily budget you know when you travel what is it we're gonna go to New York you know together I was born on the East Coast how much is gonna cost us how much money do we need to bring before ATMs and stuff like that and so you go okay you do the math and you're like I'm gonna need $200 a day $100 a day back pikers do it you know out of college you know thirty dollars a day whatever your number is you've got to come out with what is gonna be your daily amp our budget it's essential you cannot size a battery bank without knowing what you need it's like sizing your retirement and not knowing what your burn rate is gee a million dollars in the bank you need 10 million or you need nothing what's your burn rate it's got to be something and you got to know what your a yearly burn rate is to figure out how much money you need to save for retirement and batteries are very similar to that so what I'm trying to emphasize here is that people come to me and this I would say is 90% of the voters come to me and say Jeff I really use no power I'm super frugal I don't have I don't have any power needs I'm like oddly enough everyone says that yet I'm in the business of delivering power so let's walk back and let's figure out how is it possible that nobody needs power yet that's the very thing that I'm sort of driven at solving and what people don't take into consideration is the loads of a refrigerator on your boat the moment you take away a refrigerator in your boat it's sort of like being mortgage free your mortgage free you are rich absolutely congratulations a lot of envy super aspirations to get there one day but if you love fresh food and cold food and cold beverages you have a mortgage on your boat and I'm talking about a mortgage without any down I'm talking full payment I'm talking it's going to be 80% of your income welcome to the world of hurt okay there's no shortcuts refrigeration is the largest number one draw until your boat is basically probably around to an eighty ninety footer and you're running generators all the time but up to that point refrigeration is number one load on a boat and the bigger the boat the more refrigeration they have they have one on the aft deck they want to have on the flybridge they have a deep freeze down below they have double door fridges and you can have a sailboat or like I am and a 30-footer and you have only then you've got a big hunter 50-footer you got two fridges you know like the fridges just simply are growing exponentially as a function of your size and so refrigeration is the largest load on a boat and if you think you're a Luddite if you have any refrigeration on your boat unfortunately you might be a Luddite in your everyday spending I you don't buy coffees you don't go out for dinner as you turn the lights off all the time but if you have a mortgage you ain't rich not in a place like Vancouver you can't be you just can't and so refrigeration is going to be a huge part of your daily a power needs I'm giving you numbers here to sort of imagine what is your burn rate on typical boats you know is it 85 amp hours a day is it 375 is it 500 you know I've got some boats there are a thousand a half hours a day there's no limit of course you know but if you don't have a battery monitor on your boat it's very hard for you to know that so one way is to ask someone like myself a Jeff I've got this vote here's what I have and I'll be able to guess it just because you know experience sort of like a good golfer knows what club to take depending where they are right I have no clue what I'm doing at golf so my dad always tells me no no you can't do that right now no you got to take this club right same thing with amp-hours now if you haven't a battery monitor on your boat everyone should definitely should you're gonna be able to actually know what your burn rate is because you start your day at noon in 12 off 24 hours later if you didn't run the engine or have solar or any recharge you'll be able to know like yeah on a typical day ever and 100 amp hours on a typical day ever in 200 amp hours where it gets a little bit complicated is that your burn rate in the summer is different than the winter because the lights are longer in the winter you're running heat in the winter heat comes from diesel but the distribution of that heat is going to come from batteries right so you've got to know what's my number and that's you see that what people are going offshore I was looking at a spreadsheet the other day what are my amp hours at a destination and what are my amp hours while under way two different numbers you're not using an autopilot at a destination but you're maybe going to be using an autopilot if you don't have a wind vane under way you're going to be using your radar potentially 12 hours a day are you going to be using your radar at a destination or an anchorage probably not so the numbers are different for people that go offshore underway or at destination and here in BC or for a cruiser your power consumption in the summer and in the winter is going to be different so depending if you only boat in the summer then only care about the number in the summer but if you boat in the shoulder season and/or the winter then you have to start considering you okay yeah well I'm gonna draw more power in the winter because the lights are gonna be on longer the heat is gonna be on right those are factors that come to play you
Boating Tech Talk
Boating Tech Talk
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How To: Marine Electrical Seminar - Charging Your Batteries - Episode 3 of 12