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hi everyone welcome to another session

of boatingtechtalk.com we've got a

question from a fellow boater named rick

rick asks hey jeff my question is on

minimally sunny days should i run the

generator charger to maximize full

charge and then let solar maintain

or

should i let solar charge and run the

generator charger to complete cycle to

100

in the afternoon

that's a great question

all right it's complicated it's not easy

it depends

so first of all let's think about what

are the advantages of either solution

one solution is to run a generator which

in turn would power a charger to

actually recharge the batteries right

it works really well when the batteries

are really depleted and your battery

charger is at bulk and ideally you maybe

have more than one battery chargers or

at least a very big one so that you're

quickly recharging your battery bank

and that's really dependent and rick

didn't tell us but that's really

dependent on having a really good size

charger for your battery bank right and

we know the rules and i've got lots of

videos on this that you want at least 10

of charge rate as a function of your

battery capacity so and you also know

that there's a maximum theoretical

acceptance charge right that's charge

acceptance rate car and we want to make

sure also that we're actually not taking

too long to charge our batteries right

there's a minimum but there's also a

maximum so being fined somewhere in the

middle is really going to maximize your

ability to reduce your generator runtime

we've got videos about that again do a

search you'll be able to find them but

here's the key right the end of the day

running a generator to run a charger to

recharge your batteries is extremely

inefficient

and a waste of time and money

when the generator is unloaded and your

charger is running at very low current

output meaning you're in the tail end of

acceptance charge

or you're getting close to float

and when that happens it doesn't make

sense to run a generator to power a

charger so here's the beauty with solar

right

solar gives us the ability to do one

thing

there is no cost to solar right even if

the output is minimal it's good

so

with solar you can actually get to the

top end and not have basically

diminishing returns

on your ability to recharge the battery

bank all the way to the top

the question is

most for most of us boaters our solar

array

isn't sufficient enough to top us back

to 100 every day it's just a reality

it's not that we don't want to most of

us besides money can't do it because we

don't have enough physical space to

mount enough solar panels

to offset all our consumption on all

weather days right because some days

there's a lot of sun and some other days

there isn't and some days there's a lot

of sun in the summer but not so much in

the winter so it all depends

so if you're lucky enough to have solar

panels on your boat and to have a

generator that can in turn power a

battery charger to recharge your battery

banks

generally what i would say is

you probably want to find that sweet

spot where you can run your generator in

the morning or in the daytime somewhere

in the daytime you know after the early

hours

and run it for a period of time and not

longer than that period of time and

here's the here's here's the hard part

maybe you run it for an hour maybe you

run it for two hours

and by the time you finish that the

solar will have enough time for the rest

of the afternoon or the rest of the day

to get you back 100

so you basically want to do

generator charger

up to a point where solar can bring you

to 100

it's giving like that little boost right

to your batteries so they get as close

to what and then the solar brings it all

their way back because remember when

you're actually running your generator

charger

most likely your solar is running too so

both are actually running concurrently

the trick is don't run your generated

charger at the end because that's when

you least want to do it because it's

going to cost you way too much in wear

and tear in your generator to run and

unload it to run a charger that is

partially outputting so that was a great

question rick and thanks for asking

i want to thank you for watching this

video don't forget to subscribe if you

want to get more of this cool content

and also check out our website if you've

got questions that are unanswered we've

actually taken the time to answer quite

a few questions and you might be

surprised to find the answer right there

on our website so thanks again

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