On Jul 23, 8:00 pm, Skip Gundlach wrote:
On Jul 23, 12:59 pm, Bob wrote:

Hi Skip:

Do you have a way to determin a battery's level of charge?

Battery Monitor?
Hydrometer?

Bob

Bob wrote:


There is another path............. reduce load = smaller house bank,
smaller battery charger, smaller alt, less engine running, quiter,
cooler, also less things to fix!

Bigger aint always better. My 400 Ah house bank is huge...............
for me

As long as you remember that you must replace 125AH for every 100AH
consumed and the max sustained recharge rate is 15% of the battery
bank AH capacity.

Being realistic, over time, electrical consumption will increase, not
decrease.

These days, minimalists are few and far between.

Lew

On Tue, 24 Jul 2007 03:00:33 -0000, Skip Gundlach
wrote:

On Jul 23, 12:59 pm, Bob wrote:
On Jul 23, 8:32 am, Skip Gundlach wrote:

July 19th -
I go in with one of the two

spare
alternators I have, and change it out, on the thought that perhaps
the
one
which has been on the engine since we bought it was somehow
defective. Ever
hopeful, perhaps this one is 70 amps? Nope. Same basic output. If
we
load up everything possible at the same time, it's more than the
alternator

can supply, let alone fill the battery with the excess.

Skip............. just how many amps do you use in a day?!?!!!!?

Bob

Hi, Bob,

We don't yet know. We're gong to do an energy audit, prolly tomorrow,
to see just exactly how much each item uses.

However, the root of the problem was twofold. We didn't have an
effective shore power charger, for some extended period of time (we
don't know how long, as it was just discovered). That meant that we
were being profligate with our 12V ashore and at the dock, and running
our entire, or a major part of the, load, on just the solar and wind.
At the dock and at the stands, that was pretty low as compared to
being out in the briny. The second problem was that, as we were
motoring for most of this trip, and assuming we had plenty of amps to
use pretty much whatever we wanted while motoring, in fact, either the
belt was slipping and/or the alternator was not putting out enough to
replace the amps being used and recharging that which was being taken
otherwise.

So, for a long time, and in particular in the last week, our batteries
have been in severe deficit. However, they're now up to snuff, the
shorepower charger does a great job in keeping up and dumping power
into the battery, and the wind and solar are now again making
meaningful contributions to our overall operation.

We're taking all the alternators to be tested tomorrow; if they aren't
up to snuff (the one I'd just put on didn't put out at all), we're in
for new alternators of higher output. I've got responses from several
sources about the means to achieve that in the same mounting as I
have, so I'm hopeful we'll be fine about it. Once we've proven our
charging sources, we'll go on the hook and prove our ability to live
in our budget.

Of course, in the end, it's pretty simple. We modify our lifestyle to
accommodate our electrical income. If we can't make it work, we'll
break out the Honda genset. If we find we use that all the time,
we'll figure out some means to make it reasonable to do so. We
planned on using it regularly, in any event, for powering our hookah
rig, so I'm currently looking for something which won't outgas to hold
the gasoline, as it uses straight, vs our outboards which are 2 cycle,
and, in particular, doesn't use much of it, so we'll have small usage
and some storage issues.

Thanks for the interest. Stay tuned in the coming posts about our
actual resolutions...

L8R

Skip

Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig KI4MPC
See our galleries at www.justpickone.org/skip/gallery !
Follow us at http://groups.google.com/group/flyingpiglog and/or
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheFlyingPigLog

"You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make
it
come true. You may have to work for it however."
(and)
"There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its
hands.
You seek problems because you need their gifts."
(Richard Bach, in The Reluctant Messiah)

L8R

Skip

Morgan 461 #2
SV Flying Pig KI4MPC
See our galleries at www.justpickone.org/skip/gallery !
Follow us at http://groups.google.com/group/flyingpiglog and/or
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TheFlyingPigLog

"You are never given a wish without also being given the power to make
it
come true. You may have to work for it however."
(and)
"There is no such thing as a problem without a gift for you in its
hands.
You seek problems because you need their gifts."
(Richard Bach, in The Reluctant Messiah)to your system.

Skip,

I strongly suggest that you get a digital voltmeter with at least one
decimil place readout and wire it into your system. Use a selector
switch so that you can read the voltage of any battery bank. It is
priceless for monitoring what is going on with the electrons.

The one I have is a LED readout so it is easy to see at night.

You can use it to check everything - charging? It will climb up to
about 14.4 volts and then drop off to about 13.6, or if you are using
a manual charger you can monitor voltages and switch the charger at
the appropriate time. How much power are your nav lights using just
switch them on and check the voltage. Ho! Ho! Turned the lights on and
the voltage driopped 0.1 volts at 12.7 volts. A little math and you
know how much power yout lights draw.




Bruce in Bangkok
(brucepaigeATgmailDOTcom)

On Jul 24, 5:46 am, Bob wrote:
On Jul 23, 8:00 pm, Skip Gundlach wrote:

On Jul 23, 12:59 pm, Bob wrote:

Hi Skip:

Do you have a way to determin a battery's level of charge?

Battery Monitor?
Hydrometer?

Bob

Somehow I think Skip would prefer to spend time writing lengthy
cruising blogs, than learning about S.G. levels... =)

cheers,
Pete.

* wrote, On 7/24/2007 6:09 AM:
....

You can use it to check everything - charging? It will climb up to
about 14.4 volts and then drop off to about 13.6, or if you are using
a manual charger you can monitor voltages and switch the charger at
the appropriate time. How much power are your nav lights using just
switch them on and check the voltage. Ho! Ho! Turned the lights on and
the voltage driopped 0.1 volts at 12.7 volts. A little math and you
know how much power yout lights draw.

What math is that? How does the voltage drop at the battery tell you
the Amperage its delivery?

BTW, I agree about the DVM, its essential on any boat that has more
than a minimal electrical system. Better yet is an Amp-hour meter,
certainly pricey but worth every penny if you have larger loads, such
as a fridge, and tend to live off-grid.

Jeff brought forth on stone tablets:
* wrote, On 7/24/2007 6:09 AM:
...

You can use it to check everything - charging? It will climb up to
about 14.4 volts and then drop off to about 13.6, or if you are using
a manual charger you can monitor voltages and switch the charger at
the appropriate time. How much power are your nav lights using just
switch them on and check the voltage. Ho! Ho! Turned the lights on and
the voltage driopped 0.1 volts at 12.7 volts. A little math and you
know how much power yout lights draw.


What math is that? How does the voltage drop at the battery tell you
the Amperage its delivery?

BTW, I agree about the DVM, its essential on any boat that has more than
a minimal electrical system. Better yet is an Amp-hour meter, certainly
pricey but worth every penny if you have larger loads, such as a fridge,
and tend to live off-grid.

I second the comment that you need a way to monitor amp-hours in and out
of your batteries - it is the only real "fuel gauge" for batteries that
there is. And it is essential if you are not living plugged into shore
power. We have a Link 2000 and I absolutely love it.

bob
s/v Eolian
Seattle

* RW Salnick wrote, On 7/24/2007 10:23 AM:

BTW, I agree about the DVM, its essential on any boat that has more
than a minimal electrical system. Better yet is an Amp-hour meter,
certainly pricey but worth every penny if you have larger loads, such
as a fridge, and tend to live off-grid.

I second the comment that you need a way to monitor amp-hours in and out
of your batteries - it is the only real "fuel gauge" for batteries that
there is. And it is essential if you are not living plugged into shore
power. We have a Link 2000 and I absolutely love it.

Yes, I love mine also. Since we have a single house bank, and the
stating batteries don't need a meter, we run the fridge through the
second leg of the meter so we can monitor its usage day by day.

One must be careful though - our meter has a "drift" that I've never
been able to adjust out. I've found that the best measure of battery
state (other than specific gravity) is actually the charge rate. In
any case, I read the monitor several times a day so that I don't get
caught by surprise.

On Tue, 24 Jul 2007 10:14:12 -0400, Jeff wrote:

* wrote, On 7/24/2007 6:09 AM:
...

You can use it to check everything - charging? It will climb up to
about 14.4 volts and then drop off to about 13.6, or if you are using
a manual charger you can monitor voltages and switch the charger at
the appropriate time. How much power are your nav lights using just
switch them on and check the voltage. Ho! Ho! Turned the lights on and
the voltage driopped 0.1 volts at 12.7 volts. A little math and you
know how much power yout lights draw.

What math is that? How does the voltage drop at the battery tell you
the Amperage its delivery?

BTW, I agree about the DVM, its essential on any boat that has more
than a minimal electrical system. Better yet is an Amp-hour meter,
certainly pricey but worth every penny if you have larger loads, such
as a fridge, and tend to live off-grid.

I had, foolishly, assumed that he knew the resistance of the devise,
mainly I guess because the O.P. was talking about a low amperage mast
head light.

The problem with the amp hour meters is (I suspect) they aren't very
accurate. I admit that I've only read the manual on a couple of
different makes but they both talked about initializing the meters and
then later into the manual they mention that you need to re-initialize
(or maybe they said "zero") the meters from time to time..

I quite like the basic idea but given that as the battery ages the
charging time changes I cannot see how the meter can be absolutely
accurate and if it is only approximately then I can envision problems
although it certainly seems to make things simpler.










Bruce in Bangkok
(brucepaigeATgmailDOTcom)

On Jul 23, 11:21 pm, Lew Hodgett wrote:
Bob wrote:

Bigger aint always better.


These days, minimalists are few and far between.

Lew


Hi Lew:

I must agree sadly with you.

In my 20s I sported about the west coast on my Norton motorcycle. It
was basically two tyres, a frame, and two cylinders. Light, fast, and
easy to fix cause everything was right there. I just could not
understand other riders who zoomed past with full dress Honda lead
wings, huge faring, fiberglass saddle bag condos, AND pulling a
trailer. I think there was a mortycycle under all that ****. Sorta
defeated the purpose of a motorcycle I thought. Christ, they
reportedly even had a reverse gear !?! But they seemed to be having
fun............

I wonder what I can fix for lunch since I don't have a
refer............. oh yes,

boiled pasta
cabbage, carrots, some unions
peanut sauce
fish sauce
Squeeze of lime
some wonderful red chili sauce with that rooster on the bottle.

And a nice glass of tea

Umm........ fresh crunchy............ AND NO REFER !

After lunch ? Since I don't need to install another alternator or
write a daily 1000 word blog I think Ill bike over to the library and
flirt with woman in the children's section. She's way
cute..................

Bob

* wrote, On 7/24/2007 11:10 AM:
The problem with the amp hour meters is (I suspect) they aren't very
accurate. I admit that I've only read the manual on a couple of
different makes but they both talked about initializing the meters and
then later into the manual they mention that you need to re-initialize
(or maybe they said "zero") the meters from time to time..


They are quite accurate in a sense, but I think mine gets confused by
the number and variety of charge sources and sinks. This leads it to
automatically adjust its concept of charge efficiency poorly.
Recently I realized it was using 73% when a better choice was 87%.
However, if you understand that is happening, its easy to compensate.
In my case, I knew that it was losing about 15 Amp-hours a day. A
few hours of charging, as when powering through Wood's Hole is enough
to reset the meter. On a day by day basis, when my alternator charge
rate drops down to around 40 Amps, I know the 450 Amp-hour bank is at
about 90%.

I quite like the basic idea but given that as the battery ages the
charging time changes I cannot see how the meter can be absolutely
accurate and if it is only approximately then I can envision problems
although it certainly seems to make things simpler.


Its better on the usage side than on the charging side. But still,
its infinitely better than nothing.