Cheapo Charging

alb40

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In my quest to become a tight a*se boater, i am looking at a cheap way to put the charge from my two engines into two battery banks.

I dont want to set it up as one bank per engine as i want both engines to be able to charge all the batteries, for example if one engine breaks down.

I have two 50 amp alternators. I also have one voltage sensortive relay that i kept from my old boat.

Question is, can i parallel the outputs of both the alternators so that either or both can charge via the one single relay? It is a 180 amp rated Amber Valley voltage sensortive relay.

Id appreciate any input or other ideas.

Thanks

Alex
 

aluijten

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No way you can just set the output of both altenators in parallel, it will mess up the voltage regulators from the alternators real good.
What might be possible is to use a circuit as used in connecting a solar panel to the charging circuit. This might allow two alternators to be used for charging a set of batteries. You will have to take a good look at the maximum current these things can handle as alternators will deliver a bit more juice then an average solar panel.

Arno
 

aidancoughlan

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have a google for 'Battery combiner' - there are a couple of these available in the USA, although I havnt seen them for sale on this side of the pond. As I understand it, the VSR is mono-directional and 'senses' of one battery bank only. The Battery combiner paralells the batteries when the voltage on *either* bank is elevated as it is charged. Come to think of it, I think BEP have a 'dual-sensed' VSR on their web site which possibly does the same thing - you can get BEP stuff from Merlin equioment or www.ecsmith.com.

I dont know this stuff well enough to know if this solves your problem, but it might be worth checking out.
 

squidge

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cheapest way i can think of is to have seperate banks with two isolator switches.
Wire each engine to the inputs of each switch and the out puts to each bank so that ether engine can charge a single or both banks when the iso switch is set to "both". You will have to manually monitor the switches and i do not think it adviseable to have both engins charging the same bank at the same time.There are probly other better ways as someone else my suggest.
Keeping it simple is usually the cheapest way.
BTW i take it your tow banks are 2 single batteries?
 

halcyon

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Basically yes.

The system we supplied Sealine for years paralled both engines to the service battery, and we never had a problem. Each engine charged it's battery, then linked to the service battery, it also ment that if you lost an alternator, it rolled over to allow the good alternator to charge the other engine battery.

Drop me a PM


Brian
 
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