Remote work on a liveaboard?

[hellopeople]

I've been researching buying a first time boat and living/working from it.

I'd like to anchor as much as possible.

What would it take to power 3 laptops on a 35 foot boat?

[ttex]

Originally Posted by hellopeople

What would it take to power 3 laptops on a 35 foot boat?

Not much.

[cal40john]

The length of the boat has little to do with it.

An Alienware 18 running a game apparently can use over 300 watts, an IPad appears to be able to run without discharging with 12 watts. One draws 25 times as much power as the other. First you need to find the power use of the laptops you intend to use. Times how long they will be on to find the energy required.

Are you planning on using the main engine, a generator, solar power, wind power?
Find out the watts of the charging source.

You're probably going to charge the boat's batteries and run your laptops of off that. How big is your alternator? How many hours do you want to run your main engine if going that route?

Solar power - how many hours a day they produce in your area? With this you can compute energy required, which tells you how many watts you need.

There's a lot more detail needed.

[Fore and Aft]

Hellopeople we charge three laptops almost daily when we are onboard and don't really notice the drain. I can't even accurately tell you what electrical system we have. There are two big solar panels, wind generator and 300 amps of house batteries I think? Our one rule is no charging until the sun is up or if the wind generators working. I bet lots of people with families onboard charge multiple devices.
Cheers

[cal40john]

Originally Posted by Fore and Aft

Hellopeople we charge three laptops almost daily when we are onboard and don't really notice the drain. I can't even accurately tell you what electrical system we have. There are two big solar panels, wind generator and 300 amps of house batteries I think? Our one rule is no charging until the sun is up or if the wind generators working. I bet lots of people with families onboard charge multiple devices.
Cheers

For many people you are probably correct. He wants to work onboard. Again for most tasks it won't be an issue. Doing high end graphics rendering all day long on a high end laptop could be different, check out the numbers I posted above.

Without knowing specs and what he's doing it could be inconsequential or a huge disappointment.

[KompetentKrew]

I started to reply to this earlier - I think my 2018 MacBook Air runs off less than 15W, even with moderate usage; I have a 15W Belkin USB-C charger, and that will keep it above 90% even whilst doing a little photoshop. My fridge pulls closer to 40W, when it's running.

However I believe that this is one of those questions that, if you have to ask, you're not ready to do it - buying a boat and just moving your whole life onto it is a much bigger undertaking than moving house.

You can easily run 3 laptops if you buy a big boat, over 40' or 45', which has massive battery and solar banks, and if money is no object - have someone install a diesel genny, so you have a fallback on overcast days.

I like anchoring too, but using a marina one or two nights a week ensures that my batteries are absolutely 100% charged without needing a genny.

If OP had sailing experience they'd already understand the limitations of onboard electrics. Get sailing experience, discuss your plans with the boat owners you sail with and you'll know to ask about battery *capacity* and solar *wattage* rather than a question as open-ended as "what would it take?"

[GordMay]

Greetings and welcome aboard the CF, hellopeople.

[SVPP]

218 W from a AGM battery bank wired in series for 23.54 hours.

If the wind is blowing from the SSW, then you will need a 36 foot boat.

[rramsden]

You can add solar and a windmill to augment power. As a backup get a portable generator, and figure out how to store and run it and gasoline not below.
On a different note.
I've known people who lived on 35s. Not a lot of space to live aboard, especially if you're not in a marina. I'm planning on living aboard, but that's why I bought a 46' cat.

[SV_Sweet_Ruca]

We manage our youtube channel and do fintech consulting while aboard full time. We have 800w of solar, wind gen, and 600ah of LifePO4 batteries on our 46' boat. We also run a fridge, freezer, and watermaker. We do get behind on power on cloudy days. There are some days we need to make the choice of working or burning diesel (which we try to avoid).

We also sail on raceboats where we carry the minimum power required to run a laptop and satcoms.

Power management is important, but doable. The posters above have all given excellent advice.

Do the math. Build a spreadsheet for your power use (you can find a sample on our blog).

The biggest issue you will likely have is space. For solar and for people. Don't forget you still need place to cook and sleep.

Then, if living in the tropics, heat extraction will be a thing. 3 bodies and 3 laptops in the saloon of a 35 footer will get hot quick. If living where it is cold, you will burn energy for heat also.

If you want to make it happen you surely can, but think long and hard about how to do it. Where there is a will, there is a way. Good luck!

[tbodine88]

In 2000 I had a boat with two large house batteries and a 200 watt solar panel and a wind generator one day I used the laptop I on board all day. the next day I couldn't start my motor. so I stopped doing that. It took over a week for the batteries to have enough charge to start the motor.
hopefully you will have a better performing system than I did

[moseriw]

the next day I couldn't start my motor.


so something was terrible wrong with your electric installation. I have 420W of solar and it is not enough. I think one is fine with 600+ W but this is 4 m² for the panels. should harvest 200Ah on a good day.

[GoodShipLolipop]

As others have said, it depends. So here's how you can get a pretty good approximation for how much juice your laptop needs under working conditions, which should be a lot more useful of an answer than "it depends."

First, do you know how long your laptop battery lasts during work usage? If not, find that out, just work unplugged one day and time it from 100% to 5% battery or so. Next, look up your laptop and find out its battery capacity. Easiest way is just to google your laptop's model number (and year, if it's something that gets refreshed occasionally like a MacBook). Now divide the battery capacity in amp hours by the time it took you to go from 100% to 5%, and that's how many amps your laptop consumes on average while working.

For instance, my old 2012 MBP has an 8.5 Ah battery. If it took 8.5 hours to drain the battery, then that would be a 1.0 amp drain. If it took just one hour to drain the battery, that's an 8.5 amp drain.

Now just combine the power usage with the time you'd like to work, and now you know how much power you need to supply to the batteries every day to keep up with the laptop's usage.


Note: If your battery is old and worn out, this will be a significant overestimate of the power usage, because the battery will have a lower capacity than listed. But this is a good upper bound.