Genverters

[Leonidas]

I am considering to replace the existing diesel 4 kw generator with another unit. I came across the Whisper Power who are including a series of marine Generators/Inverter very compact and quiet units. As I gather the generator will charge the service batteries and during off-peak demand the inverter takes over and supplies the A/C circuit with pure sine 230 V a/c, but it will switch over to a/c generator mode if the a/c demand , for example switching on a heavy consumer such as a calorifier, exceeds a certain limit.
I shall be most obliged to hear any views and share the experience from any user particularly with respect to the reliability issues of the electronics and diesel engine itself .
Thank you.

 

[William_H]

The modern move for AC generators is to actually have a DC generator (an alternator with rectifiers) whose DC output is converted to AC in a (hopefully) pure sine wave inverter. The old generators use a 50 hertz alternator to produce the AC. This means that the motor generator must run at 3000RPM or 1500RPM exactly to produce 50 hertz. This means that at low power load it runs at the same high speed. In the modern design the engine can run at any speed so slow at low power reducing wear fuel consumption and noise while still producing 50 hertz. So from this new concept it is a small leap to adding batteries so that for low power loads it can stop the engine. Very neat . However it might be interesting to see what voltage the batteries are. Higher the voltage the less losses as low current at high power. If it relies on the ships 12v batteries (or better the ships 24v batteries) then the high current will be a problem. It can be overcome with heavy wiring. Anyway the electronic controls should not be a huge problem although you might need some sort of logic to stop the engine starting and stopping too frequently as say with a fridge cycling on and off. If indeed it is running on the ships 12v batteries then you might choose to run a high powered pure sine wave inverter and manually operate an engine driven alternator or separate 12v generator. It all becomes mixed together. ol'will

 

[sailaboutvic]

I am considering to replace the existing diesel 4 kw generator with another unit. I came across the Whisper Power who are including a series of marine Generators/Inverter very compact and quiet units. As I gather the generator will charge the service batteries and during off-peak demand the inverter takes over and supplies the A/C circuit with pure sine 230 V a/c, but it will switch over to a/c generator mode if the a/c demand , for example switching on a heavy consumer such as a calorifier, exceeds a certain limit.
I shall be most obliged to hear any views and share the experience from any user particularly with respect to the reliability issues of the electronics and diesel engine itself .
Thank you.

Can't really give you much input as yet , re fritted a FP 5000i last oct , so far so good , yes I know all the write up about FP and with the old once there was some issues although the one we replace been on the boat since 2001 .
The Gen is very quiet , it hardly hear it out side ,
It doesn't charge the batteries as the wispy does tho that not a problem we us , while it's running we just use the victron charger , you would need it running anyway to charge them , plus are panels keep the battery fully charge ,
it running at valuables speeds and will give up to 17A pure sine .
It's small enough to fit in our engine compartment.
So far we happy with it .

 

[Leonidas]

I already have a pure sine 800w inverter and a Mastervolt charger plus Victron batterries monitoring. What sort of a diesel engine is the FP 5000 fitted with?? Te reason for asking is that I have a Paguro4000 fitted with Farymann diesel which I understand has now been discontinued.
Thanks

 

[sailaboutvic]

Ferryman is what my old FP had , sea water cool . The 5000i has an in house Aluminum engine fresh water cool .
I not stating it's the best small gen money can buy , I not had it that long enough , but it's light I think it's 68kg the old one was 90kg , it run very quiet , although the we fitted a water/exhaust separator .
And the panel give you all the info you need , amps , engine , windings , water temps , how many amps available and a load more stuff .