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hi everyone jeff cote here with

boatingtechtalk.com uh thanks for

watching by the way

we've got a question from a fellow

boater and this fellow boater is

asking a question that some of us should

think about

but not all of us have an opportunity to

consider this question

this voter starts off and says jeff i

have a c win

um 1190 that has about a thousand watts

of

solar panels i would like to install an

inverter charger

okay it makes sense right so a thousand

watt is a decent size solar array

especially for that boat

i'm wondering if i should go with 24

volts on the inverter or 12 volts

i'm and for context he's saying i'm

setting up for extended peers off grid

would 24

help benefit future solar editions

that's a good question but honestly

retrofitting a boat

from 12 to 24 is not necessarily a

straightforward

process yeah it sounds easy to say it

but there's a huge amount of

implications

specifically you know your starter on

your boat is going to be 12 volts your

alternator is going to be 12 volts

right everything on the boat is 12 volts

so if you go to 24 volts what are you

doing that for

you're doing that four because you're

trying to effectively

reduce your cable size right because

once you

increase you double the voltage you

divide the amperage equally so

double voltage divide amperage in two so

it allows us to save

obviously um cabling now this boat is

already built it's not

considering to be built which is a

different conversation that i have with

other boaters that say

jeff i'm designing a bull from scratch

should i have 24 or 12.

that's a separate conversation and

there's certainly huge and great

arguments to go to 24 and we commonly go

to 24

depending on the boat size and what

we're doing but yes absolutely lots of

reason to go to 24.

if you already have a boat and your boat

is wired for 12

especially a boat of that size i would

probably stay away from going to 24.

not that it's not a good idea it's just

that practically the benefits

your boat's already wired and unless

you're completely doing a retrofit

it might not make sense so

again some people definitely consider

having

an inverter charger to run on 24

winlesses on 24 are good

a lot of large you know like it could

even be if you've got a sailboat owner

you've got winches

you could go 24 all those are great

reasons

but if the boat's already built and all

the equipment's already there

you know now you're going to have to

worry it's one thing to have a 24 volt

battery bank and a 24 volt

inverter charger but then how do you get

that 24 volt

to go to all the other appliances on

your boat now some of them you could

power via what's called dc to dc

converters

right a bunch of companies do that so

you could have an input voltage of 24

volts

it varies and then you could output

something steady at let's say

13 4 right and that's definitely doable

but again

you know generally they're rate limited

right so they can't do any sort of

amperage

so then well how would you get your

starter battery

uh are you going to go 24 volt with a

starter you know are you going to change

your starter or your alternator

how would you parallel a 24 volt with an

engine battery that's 12. you couldn't

so it just gets messy um and

not to say it's not a good idea but it

would be expensive to do so so in this

situation based on this boat

again being an 1190 c win i would stick

with

12 volts and remember uh voltage from

solar panels

are already pretty high you know

depending if this thousand watt array

depending on how it's wired but it could

be in series some of the panels in

series could be

you know 222 volt panels that now are in

series now you're at 44 volts

maybe it's three panels in series now

you're at 66 volts

you know the voltage drop is not

proportional

to the voltage output of the solar

panels right

it's not at all so you know voltage drop

is going to be

minimized or the impact is going to be

minimized as

we have higher and higher input voltages

and the controller is going to be

converting whatever input voltage you

have right

so for example victron 7515 means that

it can take up to 75 volts

and max current through the controller

can be 15 amps

so yeah i wouldn't uh go and change my

boat to 24 volts

from 12 for some benefits on solar

it's the cost is just going to exceed it

so a great question

definitely relevant if you're designing

your boat from scratch

absolutely absolutely you should

consider 24 but retrofitting is a lot

harder so a great question

thanks for asking thank you for watching

this

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