Hi, first the background, I have an old 35ft
catamaran that I am thoroughly refitting including switching from
single diesel with outdrive leg to twin yam 9.9 high thrust outboards. It currently has a
Rutland 900i
wind generator and 80w
solar panel going through a marlec pwm controller. Aside from that all the 12v stuff including
batteries is shot so I am pretty much starting from scratch.
Boat will have all led for
cabin and nav lights, iPads for nav and probably an Engel or similar fridge, no
freezer so pretty basic. We want to be self sufficient with no need for
shore power but would add in a portable
Honda generator for longer cruising if required.
So,
batteries first. I am currently thinking 2 or 4 Trojan t105’s for house bank with
solar and
wind connected to this bank only, plus 2 small separate motorbike or lawnmower batteries as starter batteries for the outboards. Thinking is that as the outboards only put out 6a charge, each will effectively just keep its own starter
battery charged up and act as a stand-alone system. Is this a good idea or will it waste valuable charge output? What’s a better alternative?
2nd is solar and
wind. I understand
mppt is better than pwm and would like to add more solar than the 160w max that the marlec controller can handle but the Marlec seems to do more with the wind gen than just modulate it’s charge output. Can I just use a completely separate
mppt controller for the solar and connect both controllers to the same
battery bank. Or for that matter can I ditch the marlec and get a different controller that does mppt for both?
Thanks for reading this far, any help greatly appreciated