We just replaced our lemon
Fisher Panda with a NorPro 7kw.
Some of the advantages:
5 year, 5000 hour warranty
yanmar diesel
your ultra basic KISS genset in comparison to the FP which caused me nothing but problems.
I paid $6400 for the genset and $1200 for the enclosure in Jan of this year. We got a quote for the FP at about $13,000. I think Norpro have increased their prices now but you may still find something at a
boat show.
You can get a fancy monitoring panel - as much as I would like to get a better picture of what the genset is doing, we opted out and went for the basic stock panel. You have a much better chance of fixing you unit in the
Bahamas than the one with all the extra sensors and
electronics.
We are 250 hours into our new set, we run it everyday (right now 95 degrees) as we are cruising the
Bahamas right now and not a hitch of a problem. The enclosure was a bit larger and overall heavier than the FP and a couple of dB louder but overall we are very happy with our
purchase.
We average about 0.37 GHP
fuel consumption, though mostly loaded at ~50-60% of capacity.
Norpro's customer
service was so-so. They shipped us a 220v set even though we requested a 110v. Bickered with them forever to let us exchange the 220 breaker for a 110 breaker. The only way they would do it was to charge us something like $180 for the breaker. Picked one up at We$t
Marine for $40 and just said F-it as we were headed for the Bahamas. Boggles my mind that they would black mark themselves on such a trivial issue???
Don't undersize. Look at some typical usage scenarios to make sure you have enough
power. For us we have to be able to make
water and charge
batteries at the same time. I would shoot for 75% of the rated
power as your target as you wouldn't want to run the unit at full load for any extended period of time. For me, making
water,
charging batteries and a bit our 110 for misc. components we average about 36 amps.
There you have it, the good and the bad.
Kevin