Electric power suggestions wanted for trip to Azores

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cliffdale

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I'm fitting out the electrics to make the boat self sufficient for a 2 week non stop trip.

The boat is a Dufour 36. At the moment, I have 1 service battery and 1 engine battery.

The plan is to fit 3 * 110Ah service batteries.

To keep them charged, I'm thinking of 2 * 100w solar panels. Unfortunately, the expensive bit is a wind charger, something around 4 amp, but I am not sure.

Running is a fridge around 1.5Ah, radar over night 4Ah plus electric nav equipment.

I'm really looking for suggestions as to what I should do to power the trip.

Specific things to look at would be a great help if you will send me some suggestions and links.

Thanks

Cliff
 
There's an Amp & Watt Hour Calculator here that might be useful for you. Lots been written about solar/wind, fridge types, insulation, etc. My own experience is that solar is generally better value than wind...
 
Forget the wind generator and get another 200w of solar instead. I've been using a Rutland 913 and 200w solar for a couple of years. Solar is way more effective pound for pound.

Roger
 
Power

I would suggest that the engine driven generator is really all you need for this voyage. However a solar panel of a size convenient to mount on the boat would be valuable as an emergency back up in case of engine or gen failure. Of course it would be nice to minimise engine running time but the cost can be large and I imagine this is a one off trip anyway. Even the additional battery is not really necessary. Certainly not wind gen. good luck olewill
 
I found a towed gen (aquair100) supplied all we needed, but I didn't have a radar. We never needed to run engine, but I had the two turbines one for <5knts and one for >5knts.
We had excess power and never needed to run the engine, I didn't have LED lights and ran a laptop freuqently for weatherfax/text. The Autohelm 6000 was used for 22hours a day or more.
I tried the wind gen when sailing but as it was mostly downwind the towed gen was far more productive.
Have a good trip
 
cliffdale said:
I'm fitting out the electrics to make the boat self sufficient for a 2 week non stop trip.

The boat is a Dufour 36. At the moment, I have 1 service battery and 1 engine battery.

The plan is to fit 3 * 110Ah service batteries.

To keep them charged, I'm thinking of 2 * 100w solar panels. Unfortunately, the expensive bit is a wind charger, something around 4 amp, but I am not sure.

Running is a fridge around 1.5Ah, radar over night 4Ah plus electric nav equipment.

I'm really looking for suggestions as to what I should do to power the trip.

Specific things to look at would be a great help if you will send me some suggestions and links.

Thanks

Cliff
Click to expand...

If it's a one off trip then you could get away with just a honda genny plugged into the mains charger, though bit noisy but handy to have onboard. Unless you're single handed you shouldn't really need radar at night, AIS reciever is great though, once off the shelf there are only big boys. Wind isn't really worth the bother. With 180w solar I could just get away with no charging as long as the laptop doesn't get much use, though that was with an invertor, getting a maplins 12v car charger helps a lot there.
I used Atlantic islands pilot guide with imray E1 and cm93 charts on the laptop.

Enjoy! I've been a couple of times, beautiful islands and really friendly people.
 
Dont forget LED navlights if you have not already fitted them. An incandescent tricolour consumes a lot of power on a long voage.
The chartplotter is often not needed much on long passages, when there is nothing to hit for hours in any direction it is not needed. A simple GPS will consume very little power and give you SOG distance to go etc. It also serves as a backup.

If you want radar all night, and this is by no means essential, you will need the chartplotter on, but dim the screen as much as possible, it saves lots of power, and your night vision.

Enjoy the trip
 
Thanks for the replies. The boat holds 160 litres of diesel. I have a 2kw generator but the main problem is carrying enough petrol to run it.

Lots of searches on power suggest solar is better than wind generators. I was mainly thinking of using radar 'watch' to wake me up at whilst kipping. A Wind genny would keep the batteries running for longer at night.

I dont think the solar will top up the batteries during the day having a big drain overnight.

Keeping fridge on for cold beer essential!!

It's a there and back trip so not one way. Before I go there will be several 500 mile passages to build experience and to iron out problems.
Thanks

Cliff
 
You don't say when you are doing the trip, if it is the summer period then I think 200w solar power should provide most of your power. You may have to top up occasionally by running the engine but don't think you will be far off.
We just fitted 2 x 100w panels in Greece. We run a fridge, t.v.,computers etc and it is pretty much self sufficient.
 
I would be very surprised if your 1.5A average for the fidge were realistic. Have you measured it? Mine is at least double that and in the UK at that - you will be in hotter weather and use more leccy.

Your 200w of panels will produce at best about 700 watt hours of power over the full 24 hours in June so an average of 2.5 amps across the full 24.

My conclusion was that the answer was either a generator or turning off almost everything bar the lights, the gps and the autohelm and using boil in the bag / longlife food.

P.S. I thought fidge was a nice word!:)
 
cliffdale said:
Thanks for the replies. The boat holds 160 litres of diesel. I have a 2kw generator but the main problem is carrying enough petrol to run it.

Lots of searches on power suggest solar is better than wind generators. I was mainly thinking of using radar 'watch' to wake me up at whilst kipping. A Wind genny would keep the batteries running for longer at night.

I dont think the solar will top up the batteries during the day having a big drain overnight.

Keeping fridge on for cold beer essential!!

It's a there and back trip so not one way. Before I go there will be several 500 mile passages to build experience and to iron out problems.
Thanks

Cliff
Click to expand...

A lot of the time offshore (and at anchor) I would use the genny for maybe an hour in the morning to help charge the batts and laptop/rechargable headtorch batts and anything else i could think of then let the solar do the rest. Never got much out of the wind genny.
Radar watch worked pretty well, though needed to turn it down a bit to stop constant alarms going off. If it's raymarine then these guys make a loud external alarm - http://www.tech-x.com.au/Products.html

I wouldn't want to head offshore solo again without an ais reciever, if you end up relying on solar you won't be able to rely on the radar, ais will work with low voltage and draws next to nothing. (How do i know this;) )
If you have LED masthead (most cruisers I know sail with anchor light, not tricolour offshore, easier to see), AIS reciever and windvane steering then you're fairly bulletproof offshore even if you loose most of the toys.

For weather I used degen 1103 ssb reciever into laptop with jvcomm for weatherfax, worked fine all the way.
Hope this helps.
 
I live on my boat 6/12 of the year in Greece.

I have 318w of solar panel and 330 ah of battery.
I find I can do 10 days at anchor before requiring to charge batteries.

You make no mention of autopilot, nav lights or SSB. My experience of my fridge is that your assessment of 1.5ah is low - mine uses more like 36ah in 24 hrs.

I would recommend you restart your calculations based upon more realistic assumptions.
 
I'm using 200w solar with an mppt controller giving me a max of about 14amps output in the high Summer months. Bearing in mind that there is a charge from first light to last, even a conservative average for me is 90-100amps per day on full sunny days.

Given that you only have 1x110ah domestic battery, and that you really don't want to take your batteries below 50%, that means that you only need 60ah to fully recharge, so any surplus from the panels is being wasted. Personally I would suggest that you have nearer 300ah of domestic, which meams that your panels are being maximised and any extra you generate from the engine is being stored. You then have far greater reserves to use power at night knowing you are harvesting the maximum in the day. You will also be putting less demand on your batteries as the bank overall is being discharged less.

Roger
 
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