Upgrading (?) electrical system

[DreaminFred]

Hi all-
Buying another boat (Beneteau 40CC) for long-term adventures. BTW, I'm 60+, fat and kind of a scaredy cat, so "adventures" is a relative term- YMMV.

The boat is well maintained and we haven't taken possession yet, but ...

Has 360 Ah of AGM batteries, a 2500 Watt inverter, a 500 W wind generator (included but not installed, don't know the brand), a 100 amp alternator, a 3.5 kW NextGen generator and a 16000 BTU Cruise-air and a 6000 BTU/1100 watt portable AC in the aft cabin and Norcold fridge/freezer. Just bought a DC portable fridge/freezer. I want to have cold beer, frozen meats a month away from shorepower and a happy wife. We plan on south in the winter; NE/Maine/maritimes in the summer so AC is a want, not a need.

What would your priorities be?
1) Installing wind generator?
2) Installing solar? How much? I have a source in PHX that I can get 3' x 5' 250 Watt panels for $50 each, so I am sorely tempted to get 4 on spec.
2B) Will 4 panels fit? Where?
3) LiFePO4? Wait til the AGMs fail or are proven insufficient?
4) I'm good, just run the genset when the batteries need a big charge.

As to happy wife, that's probably bigger than you knuckleheads can cover, ;-)

[Stu Jackson]

1. Solar


2. Your house bank is woefully inadequate for your plans


3. AGMs are not good for the cruising sailor because they do not tolerate PSOC and need to be fully charged often. If solar and then wind work, then perhaps the AGMs could be considered, but there are far better alternatives available these days, from basic FLAs to lithium.

[skipmac]

Second all the comments from Stu.

On my 42' Pearson I have 660 amp hours of battery. One issue, unless you are using LiFePO batteries the safely usable capacity is at best half the total. Much more than that will seriously shorten the life of the batteries. LiFePO allows you to use more of the total capacity but the initial cost is quite high and there is a learning curve for installing and using them to avoid sudden death of a very expensive battery installation.

I had a new wind gen and never installed it. Went with more solar instead.

Where to install solar is a great question. Some boats have a large combination arch/dinghy davit on the stern and mount panels there. If that doesn't work for you then my solution, I have one panel mounted on top of my dinghy davits and two mounted on the lifelines aft that I can open up kind of like mini wings.

The easy, quick and dirty answer is yes the generator could take care of all this. If you don't mind running it, isn't too loud, doesn't annoy the neighbors in the anchorage then it will work. I would make sure I had enough battery and alternate charging to run lights, nav and fridge just in case the gennie conked out.