Wind and Solar power-Payback

[Chief Engineer]

or are you?

Originally Posted by Vasco

Dave,

............ The hardest part was refilling the gas tank while it was still running.

[Paul L]

Originally Posted by Dave the Canuck

So I can recharge 215 amp-hours with an EU1000i in less than 3 hours? If that's the case, the guy who ran an EU 2000i for 7.5 hrs would have put in 152 Amps for 7.5 hrs = 1140 amp-hours.

Is this right?

ps: Thanks for being nice...

Charging is limited by the max the charger can output and the max that the batteries can accept. The higher the discharge, the more the batteries can accept. If the batts are discharged to 50%, they might except 100amps. As the batteries charge up, they accept less and less. At 15% discharge (85% charge), they might be down to accepting 10amps. If you want to get all the way to 100% charge, it will take a long time. This is why most cruisers run the batteries between the 50% and 85% range.

Paul L

[Dave the Canuck]

So, if I get one of the new 40Amp, 3 bank (and oh, so sexy) chargers, I can charge up with the EU1000i in a little over 3 hrs?

Dude, if that's the case, I'm going shopping.

Engineers out there; please comment.

[Jerry262]

For my money, it's solar all the way. My boat is relatively small (32 feet) and has no genset. Last year I installed 2x 130 watt panels on top of my aft cockpit canvas. The setup, which included the 2 panels, wiring, fuses, mounting brackets w/hardware and a BZ mppt charger cost a little under $1700 delivered. Prior to the solar I could stay at anchor no more than 3 1/2 days with a 400 AH inverter bank, a 200 AH DC house bank and a starting battery. I would then have to return to the dock to recharge my seriosly depleted batteries. With the solar (laying flat instead of the optimized angle to the sun) I am receiving 10 amps by 10 AM, I'm still not sure what it tops out at because the batteries, don't deplete enough to fully realize the maximum amps of the panels. I had to parallel my inverter and DC bank as the aux. battery connection of the BZ charger only puts out .1 amps. That's right it is "point 1 amps" The documentation doesn't mention this by-the-way, I had to call tech support to learn this after several hours of troubleshooting and swearing.
The bottom line is, I considered a small honda generator, but didn't want to deal with the floor space, gas cans, carbon minoxide, noise and whatever else. The downside of course is, while I vacation in the middle of summer in sunny California, I have had almost as many cloudy days as sunny, and while the panels still produce, it is considerably less.

Thanks all for the great furum

Jerry262

[Putawaywet]

Well as already mentioned it seems, at least to this neophite, that crusing locations will weigh heavily on which is ultimately the better deal. Me and the wife are looking specifically at the PNW and SE Alaska, which leaves me wondring if Solar is even going to be a viable option for us. At the very least, it sounds like it will have a much longer pay back vs return than if we were planning to cruise considerably farther to the south. So right now, wind looks to be the better option in my case, and even then, some of the newer, smaller, and more effiecient gens coming along like the Honda's, may wind up giving us the most bang for the buck in the long run. Personally, I'm expecting that future advances in battery technology are going to add a totally new set of variables to the equation and we're not going to be able to put the calculators away anytime soon.

Brett

[Vasco]

Dave,

No ,it's not. As I said before it depends on the size of your charger. With your 15 amp charger it'll take forever to get your batteries up. If you're down 50% it'll take 17 hours or more with a smart charger. With a 100 amp charger it'll take about 3 hours. The size of your charger limits the input. If you had a 100 amp charger you'd get 70 odd amps going in initially as the 1000 hasn't got that much output. Most cruisers have the EU2000i. It's got twice the output.

[imagine2frolic]

Dave,

My charger just kept the batteries floating. Never more than 13+ volts were in the batteries. I only let it run as an experiment with the household freezer running, water pumps, ETC. ETC. My interst was to see how long the little sucker would run while the boat functioned under everyday living conditions, and it's consumption for fuel cost.