Kantara
New member
I’m slowly going bananas. Please help me, but be gentle.
I have a 20 year old Westerly with the original engine, a VP2003T and, according to the workshop manual, a 14V 50A alternator. This feeds through a rotary ‘Off’, ‘1’, ‘Both’, ‘2’ switch into 3 120AH maintenance free batteries, one of which is connected to the ‘1’ position and is used as engine start, the other 2 of which are linked together as the Services Bank.
The boat is on a swinging mooring and we are very careful of power usage, only running the fridge when under power, for example, and using only one light in the cabin when anchoring overnight. The long summer evenings in the West of Scotland help there! However, we hope to extend our cruising this coming year, spending much longer under sail and at anchor, and I have been considering ways of boosting our electric efficiencies.
I was pretty convinced that an alternator regulator was the answer, having read the Sterling and Adverc websites. However, the recent thread on Alternator Regulators pointed me in the direction of SmartGuage where the view was that Alternator Regulators weren’t really needed these days and their version of Charge Splitting was the bees knees.
I realise that this is similar to starting an ‘anchors’ thread, but what does the team think? Are Smartguage right when they say that Alternator Regulators are old hat? If it is considered that a SmartBank is all that is required, is a Standard sufficient, or is the all singing and dancing Advanced version more than just a ‘nice to have’?
I have a 20 year old Westerly with the original engine, a VP2003T and, according to the workshop manual, a 14V 50A alternator. This feeds through a rotary ‘Off’, ‘1’, ‘Both’, ‘2’ switch into 3 120AH maintenance free batteries, one of which is connected to the ‘1’ position and is used as engine start, the other 2 of which are linked together as the Services Bank.
The boat is on a swinging mooring and we are very careful of power usage, only running the fridge when under power, for example, and using only one light in the cabin when anchoring overnight. The long summer evenings in the West of Scotland help there! However, we hope to extend our cruising this coming year, spending much longer under sail and at anchor, and I have been considering ways of boosting our electric efficiencies.
I was pretty convinced that an alternator regulator was the answer, having read the Sterling and Adverc websites. However, the recent thread on Alternator Regulators pointed me in the direction of SmartGuage where the view was that Alternator Regulators weren’t really needed these days and their version of Charge Splitting was the bees knees.
I realise that this is similar to starting an ‘anchors’ thread, but what does the team think? Are Smartguage right when they say that Alternator Regulators are old hat? If it is considered that a SmartBank is all that is required, is a Standard sufficient, or is the all singing and dancing Advanced version more than just a ‘nice to have’?