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Post by moonshadow on Apr 9, 2019 16:55:51 GMT
I have recently completed a winter trip that taught me a lot about how to ruin a bank of flooded lead acid batteries, covered in another thread. My big problem was chronic Partial State Of Charge and overnight deep discharge. I am planning on a two step process now for upgrade and looking for advice from the more knowledgeable embers here. The boat is a 2014 SO469 with house bank of 5 group 31 batteries of 100amp/hours each. Nowhere near enough usable capacity for fridge, freezer, etc overnight and once worn down a bit can’t keep up with all this plus autopilot and radios etc when sailing. My primary charging is from the diesel generator and 200watt solar when at anchor. Obviously when engine runs that helps too and my solar will be upgraded before my next big trip. So... for now I need new batteries. My first step in upgrade is likely to be 5 new group 31 firefly carbon foam AGM batteries. From what I can find these have been performing well for some over the past 5 years and not much info past this. For now I am ruling out LiFePO4 batteries for cost and infrastructure changes. My engine has a wide serpentine belt driven 120amp alternator and if these fast charging firefly batteries get depleted that can draw more than that. So I am planning on adding a Balmar external regulator to the alternator to avoid cooking the alternator. And I will add a battery monitor (maybe a Balmar SG200?) so I can better learn my needs to plan solar upgrade. My question is: do these batteries and the external regulator make sense for now? If it works as expected I will keep this system as I add solar. And.. so far I have found 3 cristec cps30 battery chargers and a really bad wiring diagram. Does anyone know which charger does what? Somehow the house bank, engine start, generator start, and bow thruster bank all get charged. If my new battery bank wants a lot more current than the cristec 30s can deliver will it just charge slow? Or kill the charger. Thanks for reading all this. My questions to the Balmar and firefly distributors pretty much say to check locally for installation advice. Nobody here seems to know much.
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Post by zaphod on Apr 9, 2019 18:22:07 GMT
I don't think you are going to fry your alternator or your charger simply by adding battery capacity. Both units have a maximum output, and they are both self regulating. The only problem will be that they will take longer to fully charge the bigger bank.
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Post by ianpowolny on Apr 9, 2019 19:07:14 GMT
We have a 45DS, 2008 model. Over the last 3 years we’ve upgraded the electrical system. We now have 4 x 142aH house batteries and a 110aH engine battery. The original system was 5 x 110aH batteries.
The electrician we work told us we didn’t need a larger engine battery so we stayed with original specification. We found some Exide 142aH batteries with the same footprint size as the 110aH but taller. These just fit in the battery box. No modification to the box was needed. All our batteries are sealed wet ones. The last set lasted 8 years!!!
On the solar front about 3 years ago we added an arch to make it easier to stow the dinghy. I have a longish thread on this on this board. Photos are included. Once we had the arch we had space for a solar panel. We found one with a rated output of 320w for a good price. I fitted this last year.
We now don’t have any electrical problem - well so far!
We haven’t change the alternator which is still the original 80amp one from 2008. Charger is unchanged.
All is working well. Now that’s just jinxed us.
Ian
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Post by rdubs on Apr 16, 2019 23:28:38 GMT
Moonshadow Not sure if you have Raymarine electronics, but if so be sure to adjust the "response level" of your autopilot. It defaults to 5, and the wheel is almost constantly in motion which is a huge drain on the battery. If I am on the boat away from hazards to navigation, I will turn the response level down to 1 and the wheel barely moves, yet the course seems to stay fairly tight and when it makes adjustments they are usually small and use less rudder angle. The boat actually goes faster with a lower response level since use of the rudder is lower. If I have seas on a stern quarter, I will raise the response level to 2 or 3 just so it is a bit quicker to react if a wave slews the stern around, I don't need an accidental gybe (even with a preventer installed). But I found turning the response level down to 1 really reduces the draw on the battery.
I've completed a few passages with my 400 watts of solar installed. It's a lazy 400 watts, meaning the panels are flat and I don't try to angle them to capture the sun better. They will put charge back in the battery during the day (while covering the loads during the day as well) but they won't put enough charge back to cover what came out over night. So I end up running the generator about an hour a day using the main battery chargers.
Even though the boat has two MFD's (one at each helm station), when underway away from land I generally only have one of them powered on to save a couple more amps.
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Post by mikebz on Apr 17, 2019 15:07:00 GMT
I don't think you are going to fry your alternator or your charger simply by adding battery capacity. Both units have a maximum output, and they are both self regulating. The only problem will be that they will take longer to fully charge the bigger bank. Absolutely correct. I've just looked up the spec. of those Firefly batteries - 110Ah (so your total capacity will be 550Ah), max charge rate is quoted as 250A!!!!! Really? You'd think they might get quite hot charging at that rate. Multiply by 5 and in theory you could be sinking 1250A of charge if the batteries are flat... With 550Ah of capacity and a 120A alternator it will take over 4.5 hours to recharge your bank from flat, assuming they are 100% efficient to charge (which is a long way from being the case with at least most types of lead acid battery). In short (no pun intended) if the batteries actually can charge at significantly more than 120/5=24A each then you really need more alternator capacity to reduce charge times. 1250A of alternator capacity might be a challenge though!
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Post by moonshadow on Apr 17, 2019 17:01:29 GMT
Thanks for all the input. I think that with new batteries and a new monitor system (Balmar SG200) I should be able to collect some good data over the next few months before I make final decisions on solar panel upgrades. I will be good to see for real how far I run down the batteries in daily use. Then I can also decide where and if I want to decrease my demands. Also the external voltage regulator kit for the Yanmar / Valeo alternator has temp probes for battery and alternator. It’s supposed to reduce the output when things heat up. Between this and appropriate use of my generator I’m hoping to keep my discharge to something more reasonable. And if these firefly batteries are really able to tolerate PSOC without damage it should be a good bit better than what I now have. Paul
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Post by j24sailor on Apr 22, 2019 4:44:18 GMT
I have recently completed a winter trip that taught me a lot about how to ruin a bank of flooded lead acid batteries, covered in another thread. My big problem was chronic Partial State Of Charge and overnight deep discharge. I am planning on a two step process now for upgrade and looking for advice from the more knowledgeable embers here. The boat is a 2014 SO469 with house bank of 5 group 31 batteries of 100amp/hours each. Nowhere near enough usable capacity for fridge, freezer, etc overnight and once worn down a bit can’t keep up with all this plus autopilot and radios etc when sailing. My primary charging is from the diesel generator and 200watt solar when at anchor. Obviously when engine runs that helps too and my solar will be upgraded before my next big trip. So... for now I need new batteries. My first step in upgrade is likely to be 5 new group 31 firefly carbon foam AGM batteries. From what I can find these have been performing well for some over the past 5 years and not much info past this. For now I am ruling out LiFePO4 batteries for cost and infrastructure changes. My engine has a wide serpentine belt driven 120amp alternator and if these fast charging firefly batteries get depleted that can draw more than that. So I am planning on adding a Balmar external regulator to the alternator to avoid cooking the alternator. And I will add a battery monitor (maybe a Balmar SG200?) so I can better learn my needs to plan solar upgrade. My question is: do these batteries and the external regulator make sense for now? If it works as expected I will keep this system as I add solar. And.. so far I have found 3 cristec cps30 battery chargers and a really bad wiring diagram. Does anyone know which charger does what? Somehow the house bank, engine start, generator start, and bow thruster bank all get charged. If my new battery bank wants a lot more current than the cristec 30s can deliver will it just charge slow? Or kill the charger. Thanks for reading all this. My questions to the Balmar and firefly distributors pretty much say to check locally for installation advice. Nobody here seems to know much. We installed firefly batteries just over two years ago and Solbain solar panels just after that. Highly recommend the batteries. We did change our cristec battery charger over to a promariner battery charger as the Cristec didn't have the appropriate settings for the Firefly Batteries. If you have any questions please message me. James
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Post by so40gtb on May 2, 2019 2:04:24 GMT
I did an electrical rebuild on our SO40 5 years ago, installing a quartet of 110AH East Penn AGM batteries (sold under various names at retail) for house power and a separate Odyssey Red Top AGM starting battery for the engine, along with a Balmar 110A alternator, regulator, and dual-charge system. The charger/inverter is a Xantrex ProSine 2, which I don't recommend due to offensive support attitudes by the manufacturer and a defect that is an irritant but not enough to cause replacement, yet. Voyageur also has 220W of solar panels atop the bimini and a Xantrex LinkLite battery monitor. The starter battery died last summer, but the house batteries are still good. They are individually fused so that failure of one doesn't take down another. In sunny summer weather, we approach net zero battery draw over 24 hours, with the solar powering everything, including the 'fridge, and replenishing charge during the day. The charge rate of the batteries is limited by the capacity of the power source, be it charger, alternator, solar, or wind generator, which in turn determines charging time. We've seldom discharged to more than 80% of capacity and never below 60%, so long recharging is unlikely. At 1500 rpm, the alternator will support around 60% of the power draw when the coffeemaker is powered by the inverter, but it doesn't take long thereafter for the charging current to become reasonable - usually the amount of time it takes to depart the anchorage and harbor. Closely managing 12V power usage can't be over-emphasized. Keeping a close eye on what's turned on and whether it's truly needed makes a big difference in discharge rate when under sail at night or on a cloudy day. Our boat has 100% LED lighting and a refrigerant-to-seawater heat exchanger for the 'fridge.
--Karl
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