Smartgauge/Bank

[pioneer]

Last year's extended cruising taught me I needed a second battery if I wanted to stay away from shore power for longer than a day. Last winter I fitted a Merlin Smart Bank Advanced, C TEK MXS25 charger and a second Barden 110Ah MF battery. Apart from a faulty monitor unit, replaced by Merlin without question, all seems to be working very well. |'ve been simulating life away from shore power whilst at Fambridge and it looks like the power side of life will be fine. Anyone else fitted anything similar?

 

[RAI]

Since your batteries are only storage devices, their capacity and your daily consumption will determine you autonomy from shore power (if that is your only source of electricity). How deep you discharge your batteries will determine how long they survive.
Personally, I have so much stuff running overnight at sea that my nominal 440Ah capacity is challenged.

 

[wingdiver]

Interesting thread as we have stopped at anchor or 'away' from shore power on a few occasions and realise it would be good to have a device that enables us to audit our usage so we can work out what we could do with changing (halogen bulbs to LED) or reducing use of.
I fully appreciate the level of amps used by a single 10w halogen bulb but it's the other stuff (like fridges, electric pumps etc) that I need to check.
We have the benefit of a fairly powerful generator to recharge batteries but I would still like to get a widget I can plumb in on to the 12v side that gives me something more useful than the ammeter on the board.
I'm thinking along the lines of a digital meter that gives an instant readout but could also show useage over specified periods of time.
Any ideas?
Thanks

 

[Colvic Watson]

Demand reduction is the key, we replaced all lights with LED's, pumps are minimal, even the 15amp loo only uses about 2 amps a day. The biggy is the fridge, we have a frugal Waeco but it uses a staggering 40amps a day and the ipads are big eaters, they clock up about 25amps a day. The solar panels keep up but only just; I find a voltage check after sundown/first thing in the morning gives a simple check on what's in there and is as accurate as almost all battery monitors which usually have huge inbuilt errors like the NASA one and require frequent resetting.

 

[Champagne Murphy]

LzK is about right I reckon. Reduce usage and increase input with solar or wind chargers. We've avoided wind because of the moving parts = failure issues as well as noise but solar has been quite effective. Meantime LEDs are getting better and better. For us the big power user is the chartplotter

 

[MikeBz]

I think the ideal would be to have, in addition to an accurate voltage display:

(a) a reliable/accurate display of state-of-charge
(b) an instantaneous amps in/out display
(c) a resettable Ah counter so I can e.g. press the reset button at the end of the evening and then in the morning see how many Ah were used overnight.

For the only device which does (a) is the SmartGauge. (b) shouldn't be too hard (other makes of battery monitor do this as well as attempting to give state-of-charge but they're not very good at the latter). (c) I'm not aware of anything which does this, although I haven't looked.

I have a NASA BM1, it's useful for showing voltage and instantaneous charge/discharge but the state-of-charge indicator doesn't behave usefully rationally.

Mike

 

[ex-Gladys]

Being on a swinging mooring, I'm very sensitive to this, especially with a Wallas cooker (glow plug drain) and fridge. Solar panels have done their bit as have LED internal lights, and I got a "once in a lifetime" deal at Southampton and changed my leisure batteries (3x110AGM) this year. The old ones got hammered in the first year when I left the switch on, and they went down to 4V in 2006, and the replacements were £value less than the old ones. In Burnham over bank holiday I deliberately didn't hook up, and with the fridge running at a highish setting and believe that in normal circumstances I am now electrically self sufficient...

 

[Fr J Hackett]

When I had Amoret I fitted a LINK 2000 which gave an accurate measure of use discharge state and charge rate not cheap but it was very good, I remember seeing the Merlin stuff after I had fitted it and thought it would be just as good. I Fitted the same device under the Xantrex label to Alchemist when I owned her I wonder if it is still functioning after 13 years.