Shore electric

boatone

boatone

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29 Jul 2001
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Just a few cables from Boulters Lock
www.tmba.org.uk
Would any of you guys that regularly use shore electric in an MDL marina care to give me an idea of what you use it for and an average monthly cost during the winter months?

I have always avoided it in the past as I have usually had a large domestic battery capacity and spent little time on board in the marina anyway. Never have been one to leave the batteries permanently charging or a fridge full of booze needing to be cold when I stepped on board!
 
Not in an MDL marina but I have two greenhouse heaters on frost-stats and a dehumidifier on a timer during the winter. I would never leave a charger on permanently, but do switch it on while I'm there if I'm visiting the boat.
 
Again not in a MDL marina but we leave all our our electrics on wether we are at the boat or not (i.e battery charger but it is a smart charger and wont over charge the batteries, fridge, cant have warm beer on a friday evening and currently two heaters) We dont use much over a year. IIRC we used about £48 last year but we are out of the marina whenever we can be.
 
CX54WEK

Again not in a MDL marina but we leave all our our electrics on wether we are at the boat or not (i.e battery charger but it is a smart charger and wont over charge the batteries
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Don't count on that!!
I also had a smart charger (Stirling I think) on my 5 year old Nimbus 345 and it cooked all 6 batteries. Fortunately the breather system was good enough to blow the entire boat up!
I then had the charger serviced by the manufacturer and 12 months later it did the same again.
I now never leave my charger on the whole time!
It really shouldn't be necessary anyway.
 
I would agree with that. My supposedly "very" smart charger has cooked mine in the past when left on, coming back to the smell of bad eggs isn't pleasant.

That's why I don't do it any more.
 
No need to leave the charger on!!! Our battery bank wont run the fridge from Monday until Friday and there is no way i am drinking warm beer when i return on friday evening after work.

So far our charger (Newmar) has not cooked or boiled our batteries so will continue to be left turned on.
 
Mine stays on all the time, serving a bank of four 140Amp/Hr beasts, and no issues.

Just winterised No Regrets, with 0.3Kw of tube heaters in the engine bay, she'll be nice and warm all winter, so no worries!

The previous owner did the same for a few years, and she's as dry as Brayman's Beerglass as a result...
 
Don't have the luxury of shorepower, just leave the boat turned off and when we come back turn it on again, will stay all winter like that with a short run every fortnight or so.

Was connected to shore power for a month once in Poole and it cost about £3.50 just running the fridge and battery charger occasionaly.
 
No Regrets said:
Mine stays on all the time, serving a bank of four 140Amp/Hr beasts, and no issues....
Click to expand...

Like others I have an intelligent Sterling charger, cost previous owner over £700 in batteries when I bought the boat as they were all cooked.

This is good advice that folks are offering on here, ignore it and your wallet will suffer.....

From a bad egg Broom owner (only to folks that are asking for it..)
 
Been on for two years now, no problems....

How long does it take then?

The batteries only have a finite life don't they? I would imagine they fry when their time has come!? (Or if the levels are not checked...)

No?
 
boatone said:
Would any of you guys that regularly use shore electric in an MDL marina care to give me an idea of what you use it for and an average monthly cost during the winter months?

I have always avoided it in the past as I have usually had a large domestic battery capacity and spent little time on board in the marina anyway. Never have been one to leave the batteries permanently charging or a fridge full of booze needing to be cold when I stepped on board!
Click to expand...

Hi there,

I'm in MDL and I have battery chargers connected through a time switch which charge for 24 hours a week. I also have a 1kw greenhouse type heater which is on approximately one week out of 2 in extreme cold spells. The cost approx is £9 per month. Incidentally, this amount of charging keeps my 4 x 125 amp/hr batteries charged quite nicely. :D:D

Ivor.
 
Brayman said:
It's only a matter of time, and it'll happen when it's MOST inconvenient - that's life!

Mine were gel batteries, no levels to check.
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We seriously abused the one 95ah leisure battery that we had aboard NC. It had two years of being run flat, not having levels checked and general bad useage and abuse. Leisure batteries are a consumable item and we plan to change ours every couple of years, it is what we had budgeted for.

We have just upgraded our battery bank to 2No. 105ah Varta leisure batteries which are maintenance free. We intend to leave them with the charger turned on as before and dont intend to change our rather abusive behaviour towards them. They are after all a replaceable item.
 
I am reconfiguring the battery regime on the new boat which previously had two starter batteries and a single 110Ah domestic (already knackered!).

The new arrangement will be a single heavy duty starter battery to serve both engines, and three 100AH domestics as a single bank, all controlled by a new Adverc battery management system. This should give around 150Ah of domestic power from fully charged batteries which I estimate will allow me to sit anywhere for around 3 days without needing shore power or to run the engines for charging.

Time will tell.......

(The choice of battery line up fits neatly in the battery box which lies fore and aft in the keel area between the two engines so all the weight is low down and amidships).
 
Brayman said:
You are right of course. I'm just changing my 3 x 200ah gel batteries this year, one has done me 12 years and is starting to struggle!
Click to expand...

Gel batteries in general will last longer than their wet cell counterparts, given the high cost of the gel batteries in the first place you wouldnt expect any less and would be disappointed with anything less.

With a 600ah bank of batteries you also wont be taking anything like the power per day (as a percentage) as we were from our 95ah battery. Hopefully now our batteries wont be as abused now we have over double the capacity we wont be taking as much power (as a percentage) out of each battery.

For example say we used 50ah per day. After one day our old battery would have been discharged to leave just 47.5% of its capacity which isnt advisable. With our new batteries the dishcharge of 50ah per day will leave 76.25% of the capacity remaining in each battery which is well within normal operating capacity of a wet cell battery. Hopefully this will mean our batteries last that bit longer, however we have still budgeted for replacing them in two years.
 
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