'Super charger' 12v generator any good?

[contessaman]

I bought the larger (95A?) one with the LPG kit for long term cruising with the idea of reducing the number of charging hours I was putting on my main engine.

A few observations:

1. It's very, very noisy
2. The cables that come with it are very short, I ended up having to spend a fair bit of money on making longer ones to get the unit outside when connected to my house batteries.
3. It rusted a lot, very quickly.
4. It didn't work.

I had a 600Ah house battery bank, which I made the company aware of pre-sales. The engine stalled every time I closed the charge switch, unless I had the main engine running, so the mini engine was not man enough to deal with a decent sized bank. The solution from the company was to disconnect a couple of batteries each time I wanted to use it, which was clearly not practical. Terrible after sales service and no admission that the unit was unfit for purpose despite my declaration of the battery bank configuration before buying.

I regret buying it and wish I had bought a little Honda like other cruisers, despite the theoretical conversion losses this product is designed to avoid.

In short, I'd avoid the product and the company, I wasted around GBP 1000 from my long term cruising budget which still leaves a bitter taste in my mouth.

Pete

Pete, that's exactly the sort of first hand account I was after. Thanks very much you've made my mind up on the matter!

I have 550ah battery bank so would probably not work for me either then. Shore power unit and Honda Genny it continues to be then!

 

[maby]

Pete, that's exactly the sort of first hand account I was after. Thanks very much you've made my mind up on the matter!

I have 550ah battery bank so would probably not work for me either then. Shore power unit and Honda Genny it continues to be then!

Sounds like the right solution to me - that device is incredibly expensive for what it is. You can get a perfectly good suitcase genny for that price and it will be a lot more versatile.

 

[Leonidas]

If you were to search this subject under " micro generators" which had been going on for weeks on end in this forum, a few years back, you will find that some innovative forumite's attempts to couple a hedge trimmer's engine to an alternator had failed as it was defeated through overheating On the other hand, you will also find there was an Australian company which was selling camping equipment and such like gadgets for the outback that was advertising a very similar product. The Australian device was however one step ahead as it could also be used fore minor welding repairs.

 

[Yngmar]

Thats the current (no pun intended) arrangent. This unit is just a lot smaller, neater and surely its more efficient to charge batteries this way than to make 240v and then back down to 12?

No no no. :dejection: The huge loss in efficiency happens when converting energy stored in fossil fuel into electricity by way of burning it with plenty of waste heat. Waste heat = inefficient. The efficiency of your shorepower charger that converts 240V AC to 12V DC is very very high by comparison (which is why it outputs relatively little waste heat). So the gain from having a 12V generator is small, and the downsides large: have another piece of kit full of flammable liquid sitting around the boat and rusting away, another set of spares and consumables to carry and another item on the maintenance checklist. Not very practical at all - if you already have a generator, stick to using that

Additionally the charger on this thing may or may not be smart (I didn't bother looking), and may or may not charge your precious battery bank with whatever charging regime it prefers (AGM/Gel/flooded), thereby possibly reducing its lifespan significantly.