Generator Power Opinions Sought
- Thread starter siwhi
- Start date
BigJoe
Member
We had a 2.8 KW portable Generator, that was OK, to start with, however, if you run it on the foredeck, at anchor, all the fumes come down into the cockpit.......... not good, and we found the noise when running it aft, was disturbing.
Fitted a 5kw inboard a few years back, and its a great bit of kit, runs hot and cold aircon, as well as topping up the batteries, when needed.
Had a marina power outage this winter, and used it to run the aircon to keep us warm, when most boats were cold.
Fitting a gantry and 800w of solar just now. I believe solar is the most cost effective, but cant cover all the bases.
Fitted a 5kw inboard a few years back, and its a great bit of kit, runs hot and cold aircon, as well as topping up the batteries, when needed.
Had a marina power outage this winter, and used it to run the aircon to keep us warm, when most boats were cold.
Fitting a gantry and 800w of solar just now. I believe solar is the most cost effective, but cant cover all the bases.
siwhi
Active member
Thank you all, some great responses which have helped me clarify my priorities a little.
As expected, an inboard genset is the gold standard, but unfortunately a pricey one and I think the opportunity cost is too high for us. So my strategy will be to spend money on things in this order:
Efficiency - especially fridge insulation and LED lighting.
Power Generation - plenty of high quality solar panels and controllers, plus wind generator, then get portable generator when we understand our usage and requirements better. Plus a couple of solar ipad chargers for the kids to manage their own power use!
Batteries - Plenty of high quality ones.
Alternator - upspec to a more powerful one.
Watermaker - I'll look into belt driven ones with a reasonable spec / capacity per hour. Some decent tanks and a couple of uses a week should meet most of our requirements.
Lastly consider a genset if required.
Many thanks,
Simon
As expected, an inboard genset is the gold standard, but unfortunately a pricey one and I think the opportunity cost is too high for us. So my strategy will be to spend money on things in this order:
Efficiency - especially fridge insulation and LED lighting.
Power Generation - plenty of high quality solar panels and controllers, plus wind generator, then get portable generator when we understand our usage and requirements better. Plus a couple of solar ipad chargers for the kids to manage their own power use!
Batteries - Plenty of high quality ones.
Alternator - upspec to a more powerful one.
Watermaker - I'll look into belt driven ones with a reasonable spec / capacity per hour. Some decent tanks and a couple of uses a week should meet most of our requirements.
Lastly consider a genset if required.
Many thanks,
Simon
ip485
Well-known member
Yes, you are correct - make everything as efficient as possible. There is no doubt LED lights are excellent, as much insulation for the fridge and freezer as possible and think about the run cycle, and autopilot settings can save loads of amps as well.
Garold
Well-known member
I think that there may be a cheaper way of doing an in-built genny than £10k.
And I think that by the time you buy a 2kw Honda, wind genny, solar panels, a larger battery bank, and a hefty inverter, you may have the price of the in-built.
Garold
LadyInBed
Well-known member
If your family are all girls the first thing to do is tell them they can't shower and wash their hair every day!
Tranona
Well-known member
It is not just about cost. You can run a boat that size without a generator (which takes up a lot of room, needs fuel etc) by foregoing the power hungry 240v bits of kit such as electric cooking, air conditioning and arguably watermaker. Just having a generator to charge batteries is hopelessly inefficient.
Mistroma
Well-known member
I'd guess you'd only be half way to £10k but there are other factors as Tranona points out. The small 3,000 rpm gen-sets don't have a great reputation for reliability. I don't think it would be a good idea to rely on a gen-set for all power with only an alternator as backup.
Solar panels are actually pretty cheap if you stick to rigid and avoid flexible. A lot of the expense does into mounting, regulation and wiring. Wind-gen can share some of this infrastructure, though they remain a poor investment vs. power obtained. You'd still need a reasonably sized battery bank with a gen-set.
A small petrol generator does add some flexibility at a lower cost than a diesel set. However, petrol or diesel generators will not keep batteries well charged in absence of another charging source unless they are running a large proportion of the time.
Last edited:
siwhi
Active member
I got some prices on inboard gensets while at Boot Dusseldorf. The most basic models for each supplier.
Fischer Panda Eco Serie S was EUR 6679 and needed an installation kit for EUR 1500. Total EUR 8179 (£6374 today)
Cummins Onan 4/5 QD MDKBH was EUR 7950. (£6188 today)
I can't imagine they would be much cheaper if bought in the UK(!), even adding on a shipping charge.
They would then need to be professionally installed (not something I could do) for say £1000, and any accessory parts added (cables, controllers, mountings, exhaust fittings, etc, no idea what's needed versus already included?), plus VAT on the total, so the total cost would be perhaps not £10k, but not far off. As noted, this provides no redundancy in case of breakdown except for engine charging.
Are there other suppliers worth looking at I have missed?
I would like to price up a decent solar and wind set up, including gantry, cables, controller, etc, plus a portable genny like the Honda (about £1k) and see how it compares to an inboard genset (accepting of course it is not a like for like comparison in terms of output or capability), but I think that's a separate topic.
I'd like to think our usage would be on the lighter end of the spectrum (certainly no AC, TV, microwave or electric hobs, etc), but there will be 4 of us, so I can't be too wishful in my thinking.
Fischer Panda Eco Serie S was EUR 6679 and needed an installation kit for EUR 1500. Total EUR 8179 (£6374 today)
Cummins Onan 4/5 QD MDKBH was EUR 7950. (£6188 today)
I can't imagine they would be much cheaper if bought in the UK(!), even adding on a shipping charge.
They would then need to be professionally installed (not something I could do) for say £1000, and any accessory parts added (cables, controllers, mountings, exhaust fittings, etc, no idea what's needed versus already included?), plus VAT on the total, so the total cost would be perhaps not £10k, but not far off. As noted, this provides no redundancy in case of breakdown except for engine charging.
Are there other suppliers worth looking at I have missed?
I would like to price up a decent solar and wind set up, including gantry, cables, controller, etc, plus a portable genny like the Honda (about £1k) and see how it compares to an inboard genset (accepting of course it is not a like for like comparison in terms of output or capability), but I think that's a separate topic.
I'd like to think our usage would be on the lighter end of the spectrum (certainly no AC, TV, microwave or electric hobs, etc), but there will be 4 of us, so I can't be too wishful in my thinking.
Carmel2
New member
Ours is a Kohler, might be worth a look, its not skipped a beat yet.
Heckler
Active member
Ive got a Bene 381, four 110amp batteries.
We are now in Albufeira, last year cruised the Algarve. Anchored for a week in a couple of places. I had a 56 watt and a 100 watt solar panel, these were sufficient to keep the batteries charged fully even though the fridge was on all the time and we watched movies on the main TV driven by an invertor a few times. I have added another 100 watt panel to drive the auto pilot as well when on passage.
Stu
geem
Well-known member
If you are heading off to the Caribbean as suggested I would look at the problem from the opposite end. With a family onboard your water consumption is going to be quite large assuming that you don't intend to live in an unwashed state in dirty clothes and spend part of your time lugging water cans back and forward in the dinghy. Everybody has a different idea about this but my opinion is that you work out how you are going to deal with water first. Assuming you all shower once a day and you wash once a week and you are spending time at anchor rather than in marinas then make water would make sense. At a guess, based on our own consumption (shower once a day and washing once a week) I would expect you to need 80 litres per day as a family of four, maybe a touch less. A high output watermaker running off the engine ran for an hour every other day would do the trick without the need for a genset. If you are running the engine for an hour every other day you can make hot water for a shower and washing up. Supplement with solar shower. A high output alternator and large battery bank with solar panels would work well. You don't need a portable or fixed genset. You are only maintaining one engine. It would work for me. We have a genset but at 15 years old and a 3000rpm unit it need permanent maintenance and regular parts.
pcatterall
Well-known member
If traveling a lot would a towed Duo Gen type generator help? One could make a good contribution to the power requirements under way and add a bit in 'wind mode' when at anchor.?
Tranona
Well-known member
Very high capital cost and potentially difficult to mount, but the good ones have become quite popular with long distance cruisers, particularly the larger and faster ones where not only can they generate useful power, but the drag and speed loss is less of an issue.
What proportion of your time do you spend under way, compared with, say a transatlantic crossing?
pcatterall
Well-known member
Around 2,500 pounds when last I looked and the OP would presumably be considering buying a wind only generator in any case. Our interest was that our sailing does not warrant having wind vane steering so we considered the duogen to compensate ( plus a bit ) for our autopilot.
Tranona
Well-known member
They don't make much sense unless you do long distance under sail. In typical Med Cruising perhaps better to beef up your battery bank than tow a speed sapping expensive vulnerable thing behind the boat.
syneraida
New member
charles_reed
Active member
The original OP quotes "heading westward". So I think it's safe to assume he's clearing off from the European W coast (in which case your stricture might be wrong.But I think the OP is talking about cruising in the UK so there will be day after day after day with absolutely no sun.
Richard
I've lived 6/12 on my boat for the last 15 years and would agree with Chris that it's most sensible to cut the coat to the cloth.
So rather than ask about generators - I'd suggest the OP does the job properly, not starting in the middle.
1. Work out your power use - mine runs <80 ah/day and the two main culprits are laptop and fridge (that's @ 40C and 35N) The laptop is used for navigation, keeping the log, audio-books and music as MP3s. Maximise your battery capacity - I only have room for 3, one of which is always in reserve for starting, amounting to a total of 350AH.
2. Put on as much solar power as you can fit - on my small 31' I get just over 300 w nominal, sufficient to allow me to anchor for 150 hrs without engine charging. I do have an MPPT controller but don't believe they make a significant improvement on panel output - they just ensure input volts are higher than system volts. I had a smart regulator but decided the additional capacity into batteries was a bad trade-off for alternators burnt out. I have a 110 amp alternator instead of the inadequate 60amp Hitachi fitted by Yanmar.
3. Then look at your deficit - the Honda suitcases are great but annoyingly loud on anchored neighbours. Mind you those who run their diesel generators all night are extremely anti-social.
The suitcase generators are ideal for operating power tools away from mains power.
RichardS
N/A
syneraida
New member
Our setup goes a bit like this.
350AH batteries (12v)
200w Solar
75 Amp alternator on engine
....... and that's it.
We are based out in the Med. and whilst at anchor the 200w of solar is plenty, whilst sailing (and using the autopilot) we use more than we make with the solar, but 1-2 hours a day with the engine on isn't the end of the world and if you're only day sailing you'll probably run the engine for at least an hour entering and leaving a port. We have loads of electrics/electronics onboard and whilst we are careful we aren't neurotic about our power consumption. The key for us was first understanding how much we used then finding as many efficiencies as we could to reduce our consumption. (full write up here.... http://syneraida.com/installing-solar/)
We had a 3kva generator onboard, but after the electrical end of it failed and repair wasn't economical we took it out and haven't missed it one bit. The few things that really wont run off the 12v system run off the inverter and are quite happy doing so, they include the vacuum, the bread maker, the blender, a slow cooker even my wifes hair straighteners.
Personally I think unless you want to run Air Conditioning away from the dock there is no really good reason for a generator, even 12/24v watermakers are pretty good now (especially units like the spektra watermaker) and if you don't want to kick the guts out of your batteries try to coincide the use of high current devices with the running of the engine (battery charging).
350AH batteries (12v)
200w Solar
75 Amp alternator on engine
....... and that's it.
We are based out in the Med. and whilst at anchor the 200w of solar is plenty, whilst sailing (and using the autopilot) we use more than we make with the solar, but 1-2 hours a day with the engine on isn't the end of the world and if you're only day sailing you'll probably run the engine for at least an hour entering and leaving a port. We have loads of electrics/electronics onboard and whilst we are careful we aren't neurotic about our power consumption. The key for us was first understanding how much we used then finding as many efficiencies as we could to reduce our consumption. (full write up here.... http://syneraida.com/installing-solar/)
We had a 3kva generator onboard, but after the electrical end of it failed and repair wasn't economical we took it out and haven't missed it one bit. The few things that really wont run off the 12v system run off the inverter and are quite happy doing so, they include the vacuum, the bread maker, the blender, a slow cooker even my wifes hair straighteners.
Personally I think unless you want to run Air Conditioning away from the dock there is no really good reason for a generator, even 12/24v watermakers are pretty good now (especially units like the spektra watermaker) and if you don't want to kick the guts out of your batteries try to coincide the use of high current devices with the running of the engine (battery charging).
