That is a thing of beauty shaggy

The specifications on the Trojan T105-RE look great, the "Smart Carbon" and the marketing blurb implies these are carbon enhanced batteries, from p.17 of Calder "Boatowners Mechanical and Electrical Manual" 4th edition:

"It can be found that adding carbon can:

1. Reduce problems with sulfation, enabling batteries to be operated for extended periods in a partial state of charge (PSoC i.e. without being fully charged);
2. Enhance charge acceptance rates (CAR) and discharge ratios; and
3. Improve cycle life."

If you have 4 golf cart batteries for ~450Ah at 12V, then on p.235 Table 4.12 it says the AIC (Ampere Interrupting Capacity) for the Main Overcurrent Protection is 5000 amps, which can be met just by using a Blue Seas Bussmann 187 circuit breaker (or some other circuit breaker that has has an AIC of at least 5000 amps).

With a larger battery bank (of with LiFePo or TPPL batteries), then its necessary to use a class T fuse in addition to the circuit breaker (I am assuming you still want the circuit breaker since the class T fuses are not cheap).

IMO the set up you described needs a battery bank of 2x120AH house batteries, preferably all AGM's with a solar panel of at least 200 better 300W to keep your beer cold and your mind at ease.
Solar panels charge 1/20th of their W per hour, so a 200W one would charge 10amps/h. This would give you 80AH charge a day, average.
AGM's could be fitted any which way you like, on their sides or upside down. No worries.

My set up is 2x120AH house 1x120AH starter which could be used as a back up, all AMG's, two on their sides charged by a 120W solar panel. No MPPT. The solar is too small to charge the batteries when l run my fridge, it needs help from the alternator every second day or so. It would need a 300W panel with MPPT to keep my fridge cold permanently and the electronics running.

As far as your 'very bright' ikea lights are concerned, if you are planning to sail at night, those bright lights are going to kill your night vision! You need red lights everywhere at night especially at the chart table. A red LED strip, or your girlfriends red nail polish would cure this, thou!

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sirgallivant said..
IMO the set up you described needs a battery bank of 2x120AH house batteries, preferably all AGM's with a solar panel of at least 200 better 300W to keep your beer cold and your mind at ease.
Solar panels charge 1/20th of their W per hour, so a 200W one would charge 10amps/h. This would give you 80AH charge a day, average.
AGM's could be fitted any which way you like, on their sides or upside down. No worries.

My set up is 2x120AH house 1x120AH starter which could be used as a back up, all AMG's, two on their sides charged by a 120W solar panel. No MPPT. The solar is too small to charge the batteries when l run my fridge, it needs help from the alternator every second day or so. It would need a 300W panel with MPPT to keep my fridge cold permanently and the electronics running.

As far as your 'very bright' ikea lights are concerned, if you are planning to sail at night, those bright lights are going to kill your night vision! You need red lights everywhere at night especially at the chart table. A red LED strip, or your girlfriends red nail polish would cure this, thou!

+1. Also, not sure if anyone else has mentioned it, but battery voltage is not a good guide to state of charge. You need one of these:
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/VICTRON-BATTERY-SYSTEM-MONITOR-VOLT-METER-12V-12-VOLT-BMV-700-NARVA-87632-/400759187914





And, if you haven't done so already, convert to LED lights throughout - or at least for those that are used frequently. Don't forget your masthead mooring light, and your nav lights if you're travelling at night.

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sirgallivant said..
IMO the set up you described needs a battery bank of 2x120AH house batteries, preferably all AGM's with a solar panel of at least 200 better 300W to keep your beer cold and your mind at ease.
Solar panels charge 1/20th of their W per hour, so a 200W one would charge 10amps/h. This would give you 80AH charge a day, average.
AGM's could be fitted any which way you like, on their sides or upside down. No worries.

My set up is 2x120AH house 1x120AH starter which could be used as a back up, all AMG's, two on their sides charged by a 120W solar panel. No MPPT. The solar is too small to charge the batteries when l run my fridge, it needs help from the alternator every second day or so. It would need a 300W panel with MPPT to keep my fridge cold permanently and the electronics running.

As far as your 'very bright' ikea lights are concerned, if you are planning to sail at night, those bright lights are going to kill your night vision! You need red lights everywhere at night especially at the chart table. A red LED strip, or your girlfriends red nail polish would cure this, thou!

thanks for the great tips you guys. LeaRning. THanks John! i do have red lights inside for night watch. LEDS sound like a good thing too :)

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QLDCruiser said..

sirgallivant said..
IMO the set up you described needs a battery bank of 2x120AH house batteries, preferably all AGM's with a solar panel of at least 200 better 300W to keep your beer cold and your mind at ease.
Solar panels charge 1/20th of their W per hour, so a 200W one would charge 10amps/h. This would give you 80AH charge a day, average.
AGM's could be fitted any which way you like, on their sides or upside down. No worries.

My set up is 2x120AH house 1x120AH starter which could be used as a back up, all AMG's, two on their sides charged by a 120W solar panel. No MPPT. The solar is too small to charge the batteries when l run my fridge, it needs help from the alternator every second day or so. It would need a 300W panel with MPPT to keep my fridge cold permanently and the electronics running.

As far as your 'very bright' ikea lights are concerned, if you are planning to sail at night, those bright lights are going to kill your night vision! You need red lights everywhere at night especially at the chart table. A red LED strip, or your girlfriends red nail polish would cure this, thou!

+1. Also, not sure if anyone else has mentioned it, but battery voltage is not a good guide to state of charge. You need one of these:
http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/VICTRON-BATTERY-SYSTEM-MONITOR-VOLT-METER-12V-12-VOLT-BMV-700-NARVA-87632-/400759187914





And, if you haven't done so already, convert to LED lights throughout - or at least for those that are used frequently. Don't forget your masthead mooring light, and your nav lights if you're travelling at night.

Yep, recently installed a Victron battery monitor. Great bit of kit.

Over the next few years batteries will become a different story. Companies are now making and using batteries in underground mining machinery for one . Some machines after 4 hour use change out the battery pack with fully charged batteries and charge the one removed from the machine .
Caterpillar have started using electric under ground machinery that after 4 hour use of batteries they can recharge in 15 minutes to a fully charged state

Battery technology and charging systems will change at a fast rate over the coming years as large companies are pour big dollars into research.
The new designs will be used many times first for high power uses and maybe after 4 years sold on for there second use then maybe to house holds and boats I hope. Which will mean much lower cost for the average user for a far superior battery storage systems

I'm in a similar bind. knocked the mast light switch on when packing up and totally discharged my a batteries. They were were already a bit tired, so this knocked them about.

I managed to get the engine started today with few car batteries and ran it for an hour or so. Hopefully, the batteries will hold a bit of charge. My ancient, and tiny, solar panel doesn't do much.

Apart from new batteries and solar panels, I'm thinking of getting a Voltage Sensitive Relay.
www.australiandirect.com.au/Battery-Systems/Battery-Chargers/KAVSR
Does anyone know if they can be used with house/engine battery switches? Or are they meant to replace the switch.

thanks

I believe these relays are meant for connecting 2 batteries (or 2 different battery banks) when the alternator is charging them. This relays enables you have 2 battery banks, which are normally isolated from each other, to be charged from one alternator (or charging source). Once the charging is complete and the voltage drops below 12.8 volts, the relay then opens its contacts to disconnect the batteries (or battery banks) from each other.

The relay only closes (connected the batteries) when it sense a voltage equal to or above 13.3 volts which would normally indicate the alternator is operating and charging the batteries.

It's not an isolation switch and would drive you mad if you tried to use it to prevent running your batteries down. There are relays for doing this and they are called Battery Protectors. Link below will explain it a bit better. Hope this helps.

www.sidewinder.com.au/page229.html

Voltage sensitive relay connect the house bat. to the charging starting bat. automatically when engine is running.
No need to flick the switch, but the switch house - engine bat. stay in place in off position and can by used in the other
emergency situation.

Thanks for the replies. So a VSR would be parallel connected to batteries, which are then connected to the switch?

I was looking at them because they're a bit cheaper than this product, which is a switch and voltage control relay.
bluesea.com/products/7650/Add-A-Battery_Kit_-_120A

And Crusoe, you're right. I still need some battery protection. These systems don't stop the house batteries being run down.

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2loneswordsmen said..
Thanks for the replies. So a VSR would be parallel connected to batteries, which are then connected to the switch?

I was looking at them because they're a bit cheaper than this product, which is a switch and voltage control relay.
bluesea.com/products/7650/Add-A-Battery_Kit_-_120A

And Crusoe, you're right. I still need some battery protection. These systems don't stop the house batteries being run down.

This drawing from the Blueseas web page really explains how this relay would be connected in circuit.

battery protection is very different story,
1/ low voltage buzzer , cheap on ebay
2/ high current contactor to disconnect the battery completely,
not a friendly option but bulletproof
/ with mod. can be connected to low voltage buzzer as a cheap alternative. /

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PhoenixStar said..

HG02 said..
if you could fit an idler shaft running off your prop shaft you could a decent ratio to spin up a regular alternator as a alternative pending of course that your gearbox is OK to spin when sailing

There is still no such thing as a free lunch, prop drive alternators cause a lot of drag, in part because they use the wrong curvature of the prop to generate power so poor hydrodynamics.
It's true that wind turbines are not great when you are sailing because there is often not enough apparent wind, but in practice they are not bad - I had 500 watts of solar on Lyra and found that the wind generator often put in as many amp-hours because it was often working when there were poor solar conditions. And upwind they go really well.

Yes, I should have said that wind turbines are fine going upwind.

Personally, I just try to avoid sailing any more upwind than on a beam reach

BTW, shameless plug, but I developed a free service for remotely monitoring my boat's power supply and battery voltage. I got tired of the power going out at my marina and my house batteries draining as a result (during wintry days when the PV wasn't providing enough power).

If you know how to use a soldering iron, you can build it for less than $20 in parts. The only other ongoing cost is an internet connection. An old Android phone in tethering (hotspot) mode plus a PAYG sim card from Amaysim (or similar) is all it takes though.

Here's the blog post:
blog.arribasail.com/2016/05/tech-boat-alarm-shore-power-and-battery.html

Happy to provide more details if there's interest.

At the risk of being condemned for thread-jacking........

This is not a currently available battery option now, but could be scaled for marine use in the future:

redflow.com/

It's also an Australian company providing leading edge technology to the rest of the world. The zinc-bromine batteries of the parent company (Redflow) are currently being used in remote mobile phone towers in Asia/Africa. The ZCell is being marketed as a storage device for houses with solar panels - 10KWh in 1/2 m^3 container (300kg) with an estimated price of $17,000 installed. I gather that's more electrons than you need for a boat (I'm a dinghy guy at the mo - so I wouldn't know) and probably more weight than you'd want to carry afloat (unless you can shove it in the - what would be a very expensive - keel), but the possibility for adapting the technology to marine use is striking to me.

The kicker is these batteries can survive (and be stored in) a fully discharged state! Actually, they need it from time to time.

Anyway, keep an eye on it - maybe you heard it here first

Full disclosure - I'm NOT a shareholder and am very jealous of my mate at work who is. In terms of Aussie success stories, this could be a stump-jump plow for the 21st century.

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jdriver said..
At the risk of being condemned for thread-jacking........

This is not a currently available battery option now, but could be scaled for marine use in the future:

redflow.com/

It's also an Australian company providing leading edge technology to the rest of the world. The zinc-bromine batteries of the parent company (Redflow) are currently being used in remote mobile phone towers in Asia/Africa. The ZCell is being marketed as a storage device for houses with solar panels - 10KWh in 1/2 m^3 container (300kg) with an estimated price of $17,000 installed. I gather that's more electrons than you need for a boat (I'm a dinghy guy at the mo - so I wouldn't know) and probably more weight than you'd want to carry afloat (unless you can shove it in the - what would be a very expensive - keel), but the possibility for adapting the technology to marine use is striking to me.

The kicker is these batteries can survive (and be stored in) a fully discharged state! Actually, they need it from time to time.

Anyway, keep an eye on it - maybe you heard it here first

Full disclosure - I'm NOT a shareholder and am very jealous of my mate at work who is. In terms of Aussie success stories, this could be a stump-jump plow for the 21st century.

Not thread-jacking. Actually, I mentioned flow batteries earlier in this very post

I'm actually a customer of Redlow, but that's for an off-grid farm application.

While flow batteries have a couple of really desirable properties, notably the ability to tolerate discharging to 0%, there is currently one major obstacle, namely motion. Current designs of flow batteries require that the electrolyte flows in a precise manner inside the multi-layered electrode cell. So they're really only suited to stationary environments, at least at the present time. Pity!

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scruzin said..

jdriver said..
At the risk of being condemned for thread-jacking........

This is not a currently available battery option now, but could be scaled for marine use in the future:

redflow.com/

It's also an Australian company providing leading edge technology to the rest of the world. The zinc-bromine batteries of the parent company (Redflow) are currently being used in remote mobile phone towers in Asia/Africa. The ZCell is being marketed as a storage device for houses with solar panels - 10KWh in 1/2 m^3 container (300kg) with an estimated price of $17,000 installed. I gather that's more electrons than you need for a boat (I'm a dinghy guy at the mo - so I wouldn't know) and probably more weight than you'd want to carry afloat (unless you can shove it in the - what would be a very expensive - keel), but the possibility for adapting the technology to marine use is striking to me.

The kicker is these batteries can survive (and be stored in) a fully discharged state! Actually, they need it from time to time.

Anyway, keep an eye on it - maybe you heard it here first

Full disclosure - I'm NOT a shareholder and am very jealous of my mate at work who is. In terms of Aussie success stories, this could be a stump-jump plow for the 21st century.

Not thread-jacking. Actually, I mentioned flow batteries earlier in this very post

I'm actually a customer of Redlow, but that's for an off-grid farm application.

While flow batteries have a couple of really desirable properties, notably the ability to tolerate discharging to 0%, there is currently one major obstacle, namely motion. Current designs of flow batteries require that the electrolyte flows in a precise manner inside the multi-layered electrode cell. So they're really only suited to stationary environments, at least at the present time. Pity!

I scrolled through too quickly then - I tried to find out if they got a mention before I wrote that. Sorry I missed it, but impressed I've found someone who uses them, but I'm not going to tell my colleague.

Hadn't thought about the motion of a boat screwing with the flow (it's hard to think about a battery requiring fluid mechanics), but now that you mention it, it's a very good point!

Thanks.

I've gone down the LED way, in fact I had to get someone to make up my mast Nav light as I couldn't at that time buy one.

Looking at solar panels, check the weight, I was looking at an 80w one when I found that the 100w one was only mm's larger and weighed 5 kg less!

When I went over to LED we couldn't find where all the power was going until we realised the the [ww] switch board had incandescent lights in it.
It was rebuilt without indicator lights.

this guy's not bad on solar both bubbles and i have bought off him
www.solar4rvs.com.au/

Late yesterday afternoon I got an email notification from my Boat Alarm (boatalarm.appspot.com). Shore power had gone out - again!

Contacted the marina office. Oh, an electrician and turned off the power to my dock. So nice of them to tell us ahead of time - not

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scruzin said..
BTW, shameless plug, but I developed a free service for remotely monitoring my boat's power supply and battery voltage. I got tired of the power going out at my marina and my house batteries draining as a result (during wintry days when the PV wasn't providing enough power).

If you know how to use a soldering iron, you can build it for less than $20 in parts. The only other ongoing cost is an internet connection. An old Android phone in tethering (hotspot) mode plus a PAYG sim card from Amaysim (or similar) is all it takes though.

Here's the blog post:
blog.arribasail.com/2016/05/tech-boat-alarm-shore-power-and-battery.html

Happy to provide more details if there's interest.

Looked at the site - looks as if it would monitor a bilge pump as well.

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nswsailor said..
I've gone down the LED way, in fact I had to get someone to make up my mast Nav light as I couldn't at that time buy one.

Looking at solar panels, check the weight, I was looking at an 80w one when I found that the 100w one was only mm's larger and weighed 5 kg less!

When I went over to LED we couldn't find where all the power was going until we realised the the [ww] switch board had incandescent lights in it.
It was rebuilt without indicator lights.

Hi Nsw,
I agree regards the LED masthead. I hadn't seen this design before, it is so simple yet incredibly bright and it seems to draw absolutely nothing in power. Essentially a clear perspex block with a tri-colour insert. Works a charm, I keep thinking it wouldn't be hard to make if I put my mind to it.
[URL= .html]

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PhoenixStar said..

scruzin said..
BTW, shameless plug, but I developed a free service for remotely monitoring my boat's power supply and battery voltage. I got tired of the power going out at my marina and my house batteries draining as a result (during wintry days when the PV wasn't providing enough power).

If you know how to use a soldering iron, you can build it for less than $20 in parts. The only other ongoing cost is an internet connection. An old Android phone in tethering (hotspot) mode plus a PAYG sim card from Amaysim (or similar) is all it takes though.

Here's the blog post:
blog.arribasail.com/2016/05/tech-boat-alarm-shore-power-and-battery.html

Happy to provide more details if there's interest.

Looked at the site - looks as if it would monitor a bilge pump as well.

Yes, you just need to tap into the wire which is powered up whenever the bilge pump is running, step it to to 3.3V using a voltage divider, and connect it to a free digital pin on the ESP8266 board.

imho wind generator is never worth it. those things are pittyful compared to solarpanels even when theres little sun...

Re battery type:

Lead acid/ideally deepcycletype is imho the way to go. They are cheap, tolerate charging at high C very well and like to be kept at high % charge. All ideal for boats. They are also charged well with a voltage regulator unlike lithium ion which needs complicated **** in between to protect the batteries.

They just need to be paired with very powerful alternator for quick recharge. Cheapest way is imho to just buy 4-6 trucker leisure batteries and make yourself a bank.