Hi all
I own a 38' feet cat which is currently being upgraded for
water sailing">blue
water sailing and
live aboard purposes. One of the planned upgrades is the
electrical system. I will only sail her for a few weeks a year until 2021 and then move on board and sail full time after that. So I need to plan my upgrades accordingly.
So for the beginning I will only do limited changes, but thise should not interfere with my future plans.
Current setup: All conventional maintenace-free
batteries - two starter and two household of app 100Ah each and two flexible solarpanels of app 60 Watts each.
Intended upgrade this year:
- Add two new conventional starter
batteries of app 60 Ah each and connect the remaining four (identical) batteries together for a bigger (Ie 400 Ah) household bank
- Add app 400 Watts of
solar and additional
MPPT solar-regulators
This should hopefully bring me through the next two summer cruises in the baltics.
After that
live aboard.
Boat usage: Tropical cruising 1-2 persons, I will manly keep away from
marinas and need to be self sufficient in terms of energy. My main consumers 1-2 fridges, a 12V
watermaker (not yet decided what model or make yet)
electronics, light and
music. No
generator, no air-con. Conventional
cooking and
diesel propulsion. No running of engines to generate electricity
As a preparation for that I'm thinking of a replacement of the household bank (will be quite old by then anyway) and an increase in
charging capabilities (more
solar, maybe 800-1000Watts,
wind generator and possibly a water generator) The starter batteries should remain as they are.
I want a simple and reliable system with as little
electronics as possible, but I believe a
lithium houshold bank would be a good idea the get as much capacity as possible with the limited space I have and with the weight concerns with a cat.
Now my questions:
- How do I prevent
buying regulators etc now which I will not be able to re-use later on with a
lithium bank?
- I'm not at all an electrician let alone like to fiddle around with that - so what bulletproof and simple lithium setup should I look at?
- Any (vendor neutral) source of information for lithium newbies available?
Thanks for any feedback!