Fried alternator

[Zencra]

Hi all, need any advice and help.
Yesterday while motoring our cockpit stereo went pop followed by smoke the cabin full of smoke. I shut down engine and breakers and sailed into anchorage. This morning with a clear head I started searching around and going to alternator first, felt it was hot and hadn't used motor in 24 hours. Disconnected battery straight away. Obviously a short in windings.
We have 600ah Battleborn lithium, electromaax 160ah alternator and wakespeed 500 regulator. I'm assuming something failed in regulator. Bms has protected the batteries. How could this happen? All connections still tight and clean, all units only 18 months old. I did software update on regulator recently. My main question is, can I run engine without a alternator?

[GordMay]

How will you drive your water pump?

[sailorboy1]

Originally Posted by Zencra

. I'm assuming something failed in regulator. Bms has protected the batteries. How could this happen?

maybe because your BMS did in fact protect your batteries by suddenly disconnecting you alternator load

just disconnect the alternator field or ignition wire to leave the alternator off

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by sailorboy1

maybe because your BMS did in fact protect your batteries by suddenly disconnecting you alternator load

just disconnect the alternator field or ignition wire to leave turn the alternator off

Indeed.

[hasse_A]

Originally Posted by GordMay

How will you drive your water pump?

Couldn't he try disconnecting both the field current and battery connection and still have the alternator in place.
As long as there is no field current and thus no magnetization it shouldn't matter if there is a shortcut in the battery windings or am I missing something ?

Edit: This was obviously discussed while I was writing.

[hjohnson]

Originally Posted by hasse_A

Couldn't he try disconnecting both the field current and battery connection and still have the alternator in place.
As long as there is no field current and thus no magnetization it shouldn't matter if there is a shortcut in the battery windings or am I missing something ?

Edit: This was obviously discussed while I was writing.

The issue is whether there is damage in the rectifier pack. The DC terminals of the rectifier are connected to the battery bus. If it were me, I’d pull the fuse to the alternator to completely isolate it.

[hasse_A]

Originally Posted by hjohnson

The issue is whether there is damage in the rectifier pack. The DC terminals of the rectifier are connected to the battery bus. If it were me, I’d pull the fuse to the alternator to completely isolate it.

Well, I wrote he should disconnect the battery connection. If he has got a fuse in line that will of course do the same.

[PippaB]

Originally Posted by Zencra

My main question is, can I run engine without a alternator?

There are two parts to the answer; the first, as discussed above, is keeping the belt tight if it drives anything else in addition to the alternator. Just disconnect it electrically and let it spin. Presuming that the heat that probably did some of the damage didn’t also hurt the bearings it will be fine.

The second part, though, depends on what kind of engine you have? An old school mechanical diesel uses very little electricity while running (pretty much just the instruments), so you can run them a long time without electrical power. A more modern engine with ECU and electronic fuel components will be a lot less happy and will drain your batteries if run without the alternator to keep up. How much depends on the engine and the size of your battery bank (if you can connect the Battleborns to the engine system you could probably go quite some time). And a gasoline/petrol engine is a whole other realm of electrical need.