Big Solar on a Leopard 48 Cat

[Don Lobo]

good evening!

I'd like to upgrade our solar to 3000 watts or more witha battery bank to make the most of that many watts. goal is to be able to run a/c in 1 or 2 cabins at night, possibly switch to induction cooking, and overall use a lot less propane and therefore not only save money, but avoid the hassle of procuring propane while cruising

would appreciate any tips on combo-ing mostly more affordable rigid panels with some flexible panels, the biggest solar arch within reason, charge controllers, battery bank size and great batteries at a good price (Ali baba?)
cheers!!

David Wolf

PS boat is in St Augustine, FL

[LoudMusic]

Eh, you're probably not going to save money switch from propane to heaps of solar and batteries and induction cooktop. But you've already got electricity on the boat, so removing a fuel system simplifies things. Theoretically. Your goal is my goal too, but cheap is definitely not part of that equation.

For that much power you will probably want a 48vDC house battery bank to reduce the wire sizes, and MPPT size. You'll probably want substantial inverter(s). And you'll probably want multiple MPPT solar charge controllers in order to minimize charge reduction from shaded panels. There are DC air-conditioners, but I suspect you already have AC air-conditioners, but either way you'll want to make sure they have, or can have, soft-start modules installed.

Our 16000btu air-conditioner was 120V AC with a 22A startup and about 11A continuous run. We had it on a 20A breaker I think, with a soft-start to cover the startup load. We ran it from a 3000W inverter. Running it used about 1300 to 1400 W. To run through the night, say 8 hours, that would be 11,200Wh. So for a 12VDC battery bank that would be 933Ah battery bank. We had 1200Ah, ran aircon through the night once and woke up to a great big "OH DAMN!". Turns out it didn't cycle off as much as I had anticipated - woops!

[Pete7]

I would start by studying what Jedi has just completed with his yacht, which might give you some ideas. I would certainly consider bi-facial panels, shame there wasn't any available in the UK when we were buying two years ago.

https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...ms-275698.html

Next have a good read of the cooking forum, the top few posts give real life experience of those who have converted to an electric galley, including me.

https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums/f91/

For a/c, there are now more efficient systems coming on line. The Kellys also have a good analysis of how much solar you need. I don't quite agree with his numbers which I think are a little high, but a good starting point.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nFA3...eO%27Kelly%27s