jimmy_the_builder
Well-Known Member
I had got the impression (perhaps wrongly) that Sterling products were not at the same quality as Mastervolt or Victron ... any feedback on reliability/manufacturer support?
New battery charger - Victron or Mastervolt?
- Thread starter jimmy_the_builder
- Start date
I had got the impression (perhaps wrongly) that Sterling products were not at the same quality as Mastervolt or Victron ... any feedback on reliability/manufacturer support?
Talulah
Well-Known Member
I've gone through several Sterling units but my Mastervolt hasn't yet reached a comparable age so can't comment.
jimmy_the_builder
Well-Known Member
What, they've failed, or you've just had them on successive boats?
Talulah
Well-Known Member
Failed
GSL
Well-Known Member
Victron every time for me, great products and totally reliable when I fitted a Charger Inverter to my last boat.
Very nice people in Holland to deal with also, very helpful.
Graham
Very nice people in Holland to deal with also, very helpful.
Graham
vas
Well-Known Member
J.,
40ft mobo with 2X190Ah service batteries?
isn't it a bit thin? My 43ft tub has 4X180Ah (and I'm 24V)
No wonder you don't need/use an inverter!
regarding ammeters, my Victron has one but lives in the e/r by the batteries so not much use...
Unless I'm horribly wrong, if you do have a LOAD ammeter on the panel, you DO know how your charging is progressing (roughly). TBH, with two batteries I don't see what interest you may have in watching a charging needle move every 10mins a bit. I'm pretty sure in the Med there's something better to do
cheers
V.
40ft mobo with 2X190Ah service batteries?
isn't it a bit thin? My 43ft tub has 4X180Ah (and I'm 24V)
No wonder you don't need/use an inverter!
regarding ammeters, my Victron has one but lives in the e/r by the batteries so not much use...
Unless I'm horribly wrong, if you do have a LOAD ammeter on the panel, you DO know how your charging is progressing (roughly). TBH, with two batteries I don't see what interest you may have in watching a charging needle move every 10mins a bit. I'm pretty sure in the Med there's something better to do
cheers
V.
NoIllusion
Well-Known Member
Our Princess 42 was fitted with a 24v 50ah Mastervolt unit that died in its 6th year. I was informed that it was not economical to have it repaired. New one was around £1100!. I went the Sterling route at £600 which has been faultless and is now in it's 4th year........I vote Sterling!
PowerYachtBlog
Well-Known Member
I went for twice to Victron chargers and for me they have been super since 2008.
Nick_H
Well-Known Member
My Mastervolt charger is 11 years old and, fingers crossed, no problems so far
Anders_P42
Well-Known Member
Victron Easyplus (charger / inverter) on my boat packed in within first month, it was sent away and turned around in about seven days. It was returned no fault found but miraculously worked when it was re-installed.
My fitter said they had seen numerous failures with Mastervolt kit too, luck of the draw I think.
It's worked perfectly since.
Anders
Poecheng
Well-Known Member
Jimmy,
Alternative view from raggie (I think we deal with electrics differently, fret about them more and we are a lot tighter!)
Your battery capacity is not very large (380AH) and maximum usable 50% discharge (which is too much) requires about 190AH pushed back in assuming no concurrent power use.
As you say you are on shore power for a lot of time, there is no need for a 50A charger which will do it in four hours.
CTEK build some of the best chargers and you can get a CTEK M300 (25Amp) for £200. You could charge your discharged batteries in eight hours on the example above. (then if you haven't got shore power its because your engines are on !)
More importantly you could buy two of them, put them in parallel (to make a 50A charger) and then for £400 you have the best 50A charger available AND you have redundancy. If one goes down you still have a 25A charger !
They used to do an M300 kit with an M300 and a separate small smart charger for the engine battery; I think that is not available but no reason you could not do it yourself.
If you had 2 x M300 (total about £400) and 1 x 5A charger (about £60 tops - depends on size of engine start bank) then you have IMHO a top quality system with lots of redundancy. In fact more Amps that you will be able to use.
My battery capacity is about 250AH and it is overnight charged with a CTEK 5A charger ! (but that is way under-specced and not a recommendation - have a larger built in charger just not trusted as much)
Last thing in case it matters - the M300 have a night setting so that the cooling fan can be turned off (and a reduced charge) so that your beauty sleep is not disturbed if the charger is near the accommodation.
All IMHO
Alternative view from raggie (I think we deal with electrics differently, fret about them more and we are a lot tighter!)
Your battery capacity is not very large (380AH) and maximum usable 50% discharge (which is too much) requires about 190AH pushed back in assuming no concurrent power use.
As you say you are on shore power for a lot of time, there is no need for a 50A charger which will do it in four hours.
CTEK build some of the best chargers and you can get a CTEK M300 (25Amp) for £200. You could charge your discharged batteries in eight hours on the example above. (then if you haven't got shore power its because your engines are on !)
More importantly you could buy two of them, put them in parallel (to make a 50A charger) and then for £400 you have the best 50A charger available AND you have redundancy. If one goes down you still have a 25A charger !
They used to do an M300 kit with an M300 and a separate small smart charger for the engine battery; I think that is not available but no reason you could not do it yourself.
If you had 2 x M300 (total about £400) and 1 x 5A charger (about £60 tops - depends on size of engine start bank) then you have IMHO a top quality system with lots of redundancy. In fact more Amps that you will be able to use.
My battery capacity is about 250AH and it is overnight charged with a CTEK 5A charger ! (but that is way under-specced and not a recommendation - have a larger built in charger just not trusted as much)
Last thing in case it matters - the M300 have a night setting so that the cooling fan can be turned off (and a reduced charge) so that your beauty sleep is not disturbed if the charger is near the accommodation.
All IMHO
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Forty_Two
Well-Known Member
Ctek are indeed very good, I use a smaller one on my car.
I don't know if the larger marine ones are the same as the smaller ones but mine will not carry on with the charge after an AC power cycle. The mode needs to selected again. With the boat in another country that is essential.
I don't know if the larger marine ones are the same as the smaller ones but mine will not carry on with the charge after an AC power cycle. The mode needs to selected again. With the boat in another country that is essential.
jfm
Well-Known Member
That isn't correct. The charge acceptance by the batteries is far from linear. At 50% discharged you can blast MUCH more than 50 amps into them, but then it tails off and towards the end they will accept nothing like 50Amps. That's why to get them charged asap you need a big charger, to take adavantageof the 50-70% discharged part of the process when they will accept a really big charge
I don't agree. They make the best little chargers that you might want for your jetski or tender, or to keep your classic car nicely trickle charge and all that, but they are toys compared with Mastervolt. They have no sensing of the battery temperature, much more limited data read out, no slave outputs so you can big-charge your house batteries while trickle charging your engine starter batteries, no networking capability, and the problem FortyTwo refers to above. They are toys, though good quality toys, and expensive for what they are. I have a few and like them for the toy purposes they serve, but they aren't right for engine room elevel stuff in a mobo
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jimmy_the_builder
Well-Known Member
Victron is looking good based on the feedback in this thread, thanks to everyone for posting.
jimmy_the_builder
Well-Known Member
Sorry, I saw this after my prev post. In fact I guess there are two modes of use of the boat - longish unattended periods when the boat is on shorepower, followed by days away in anchorages, sometimes overnight (occasionally for several days at a time). When I'm away on the boat, it's helpful to be able to run the generator and blast a bit of 50A charge back into the batteries, so in that sense a higher-capacity (relative to the bank capacity) charger is desirable, for me at least.
Poecheng
Well-Known Member
True it is not linear but there is still a limit to how much you can stick into it in that bulk period. I don't pretend to have the data but I would be surprised if you could ever get more than 75A going into a 380AH bank or, if you did, it would be for an insignificant period of time. [OTOH I have always understood the need for MOBO having big chargers is so they could get big banks charged quickly but JTB stated that he is on shore power for long period] Once you get to the last 10% or whatever then the reduced amperage going in doesn't benefit from coming from a "big" charger.
Don't pretend they are superyacht stuff at all.
But the M300 does have battery temperature sensing.
The data readout is less but depends on what you want; it tells you where you are in the cycle.
No slave outputs; that's a quality as AFAIK slave chargers are not separate chargers (ie separately sensing the start battery and having its own program) but a reduced output slice of what the main bank is getting. So if your domestic bank needs charge then your start battery gets a charge regardless. That's why they did the kit with a completely separate small charger; the best possible combination. If I am wrong re slave charging I apologise but have never come across a multi-output charger that was anything more than that - one large charger with parallel outputs.
No networking - agree
Forty-two's problem - I thought about that when I saw it and didn't post because not sure about the CTEK response to broken power and whether you chaps do solar. Anyway there are two ways of looking at the "problem": It is only a real problem if that broken supply means batteries never got charged ie the supply went within a few hours of leaving the boat. If they did get charged then only natural discharge to worry about. Another view is that if the supply is in and out then you don't want them being repeatedly charged. Whichever view I think we are talking about leaving the boat for a long while. However, a small solar panel will keep discharge at bay and a slightly bigger one will charge that 380AH bank even if the charger failed whilst the owner was at the end of the pontoon (assuming it is being left for the while as said - I don't mean 24hrs)
Not sure they deserve to be described as toys. A Ctek 25A charger is the quality equal of any make of 25A charger and better than most at doing the job it is meant to do. No use for your boat obviously :encouragement:
I have seen with my own eyes the new, unused, burnt out hull of a large and expensive motor-sailer and there is one make I would never put in my boat.
Again all IMHO.
Just seen JTB's post above - he does need a quick blast in via generator.
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jfm
Well-Known Member
Doesn't really work like that on a big mobo. While the thing sits in the marina not being used there is small DC load: security lighting, some small internal standby equipment loads. None of that impacts the 100% charged batteries as the charger functions as a transformer/rectifier. If the shorepower trips, the fridges and freezers are suddenly running off batteries thru inverter, and even if shorepower is restored 12 hrs later you have say batteries now discharged to say 70% and a dead CTek. OK, the inverter fridge load ends, phew, but the small DC loads continue to drain the batteries slowly, maybe for a few weeks. This isn't good. You need a charger that comes on when the shorepower comes back on.
westernman
Well-Known Member
My Mastervolt died when it was about 11 years old. It stopped turning on reliably - but turn it off and on a few times and it would work. That continued for a few months before conking out completely.
They could not handle repairing it as it was too old.
Jegs
Well-Known Member
jfm;5276243 If the shorepower trips said:
Jegs
Well-Known Member
Poecheng, are you sure that two 25 amp chargers would operate as you suggest? As a satisfied user of one 25 amp Ctek, I would happily buy another but fear that the output from one might be "read" by the other & the result might not be as desired.
John G