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.

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)

* 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'm going to try to answer a bunch of questions in the same post, so
am threading it to be under my original post which spawned the Amps
discussion. Due to the multiple responses, this is pretty long
(surprise! Mine are *never* long :{)) )

From: Lew Hodgett


Skip Gundlach wrote:

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

Add battery capacity, any way you can, it solves a lot of problems
including poor alternator performance.

Lew

We've already got massive batteries. The issue is properly keeping
them charged. At 750 nominal (less aging) AH, we can go for a long
time with no charge input. But if we don't put in the charge,
eventually the biggest battery bank will be flat, even if nothing is
drawn from it, out of normal charge dissapation (flooded = ?%/
month)...

From: Bob


On Jul 23, 8:45 pm, Lew Hodgett wrote:
Skip Gundlach wrote:

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

Add battery capacity, any way you can, it solves a lot of problems
including poor alternator performance.

Lew

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

We will be carefully monitoring our use once we get our audit
finished. We *believe* (time will tell) that we'll have ample
charging available for the uses we need to put our load to.

From: Bob


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

Actually, all of the above:

We have a TriMetric 2020 monitor, by Bogart Engineering, which
provides a
lot of information. Volts, amps in or out, state of charge in
percentage
terms are all front-and-center. Menus allow time from equalization,
AH
left, current state of AH up or down in numerical terms, time from and
what
is low and high (two separate measures), and so on.

Our controller for the KISS wind generator (in addition to the on/off
control of the generator itself) is a Xantrex 40A unit. When it's
piping
outside, we can get close to 30A before the internal controls shut
down, but
it doesn't start producing meaningful amps until ~15knots (designed
for the
Caribbean market). It's whisper quiet in our setup; YMMV dependent on
how
well you balance the blades. At full charge, that controller diverts
to a
heat strip setup, required because our water heater wouldn't accept
the dual
voltage unit where we used to send overcharging before we replaced the
water
heater. We have not yet installed (because we can't find where we
stored
them) an incandescent monitor lamp so that if that's happening we can
hurry
and turn on charging loads for AC devices, taking advantage of the
overstock
of amps.

Our controller for the 370W of high-voltage Solar is a Blue Sky 6024H
MPPT,
which provides as much as 30% more than the rated values of our
panels. At
9AM in Charleston, we typically show 12-15A, and at best, sometimes as
much
as 25A in mid-day. That controller just turns off the load (open-
circuits
the panels, I think is what's happening) when they're full. It also
has an
equalizer button, but with 750AH, it's unlikely we'll ever see enough
amperage to actually accomplish that, even connected to shore power.

We also have a battery conditioner attached - it uses the battery's
own
power to pulse, helping prevent/minimize sulphation. The very long-
cycle
charge regime of the solar and wind has meant that we very rarely see
less
than "full" on the monitor. Making sure we see above 13V nearly all
the
time we're not running huge loads is the bigger deal...

Our new shoreside battery charger is a Xantrex TrueCharge40A unit. We
have
4 L16H in series/parallel 12V, plus the windlass and starter
batteries
separated on an isolator. The shore charger, plus whatever solar and
wind
input has occurred since the TC40 installation has brought us back to
full,
with SGs previously in the 1.250 range to over 1.265 in all cells and
no
large variance (65, 65, 70, 75, 75, 75, 85, 80, 90, 80, 75, 75 in the
12
cells) either from cell to cell or in individual batteries.

We have no remaining halogen bulbs (haven't taken out the foredeck
light;
might be one in there) due to their current draw. All on board
lighting is
either fluorescent or LED, outside is either LED or the afore-debated
incandescent running/steaming lights left so because of "all the
current
available during engine operation" - which I may have to re-
evaluate...

From: Lew Hodgett


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.

Heh. Guilty as charged (pardon the expression). But, we believed
that we provided for that in our initial design. It proved that we
were dependent on a charging source (the prior 70A NewMar beast) which
wasn't happening. We'd not have behaved as we did onshore, at the
hook. That we discovered our alternator simultaneous problem, we feel,
now that it's corrected (more below), that the shore and engine
charging parts are up to snuff.

From:

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.

We have such a meter, but have not wired it in. It's part of a
multimeter that I use all the time. It's what I used to determine
that the alternator shop had mis-ended (male instead of female) the
tach lead on the new 94A unit.

OTOH, we have a pretty good one in the TriMetric, also digital, with
10ths in both amps and volts. We keep an eagle eye on it...

When we put in the new alternator, we (with a full battery bank) shut
off the shore charger, turned on the inverter, and loaded up
absolutely everything we could on the boat. Inverter with all the
electrical stuff we could find (two computers, all the charging
equipment for handhelds, three fans, etc.). Every single instrument
and light, in and out. All the pumps rated for continuous duty, with
salt and fresh water taps left open. All the AC and DC fans, engine
room and otherwise. The one single remaining incandescent wall
fixture. The fuel polisher and reefer, etc.

We managed to create just under 50A of load. Short of transmitting on
the SSB/Ham (we did it in standby, for only 2A), that's the worst it
can possibly get with no outside input. Of course, letting it go like
that, for an extended period of time, even with the capacity of our
bank, would be very hard on the battery were there no input.

So, after letting it consume about 15AH (per the TriMetric), we
cranked up the alternator. WhoooEEEE!

The meter went from -48 to +40, and slowly started to come down. The
battery voltage, which, by now, had been down to about 12.1 due to all
the drop, steadily climbed. It quite quickly reached well over 13,
and kept climbing.

Of course, that's also way more drop than we'd likely get before we
did something about the load, but it was very reassuring to see that
not only could we sustain that load at about 1500RPM, but put as much
back in as our shore power charger would in a no-load situation.

So, once we'd proven the point, we shut down most of the loads other
than the computers which were both on (connected to shorepower
otherwise), and saw the voltage immediately charge rate climb, level
off, and then start to taper. We got to 14.4 and things started to
calm down.

Having proven *that* point, we shut it down to keep the temps in the
boat somewhat reasonable, and reconnected the shore power. The
batteries were recovered (14.4, then equalibrium at 13.3, with the
shore power cycling occasionally, and the solar cycling in and out as
well, providing ~10A at that time of day, when it wasn't full.

Significantly, the radar didn't drop out when we started the engine,
whereas it always had before. Seatrialing the instruments is next,
but I'm convinced that our problems will either be entirely, or
mostly, resolved with the proper application of power. As it is, my
freezer is well under spec, running so fast that the evaporator
briefly acts as a cold plate, resulting in an under-temp spec (it
comes up relatively quickly to the set temp), where we've been
struggling to keep it under freezing, let alone the 4 or 5 it is now
(set point 8, 2* hysteresis).

From: Pete C


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... =)

Hm. How many times do I have to sample to earn my merit badge? In 5
days I've been in Charleston, I've done it 3 times.

:{))

From: RW Salnick


Jeff brought forth on stone tablets:
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.

I *think* I have such in the TriMetric...

That ought to hold us for a while. I'd bother the librarian but Lydia
would complain - and, besides, I'd rather write :{))

Well, no. I'm changing my tag line on the skype and googlechats to
"I'm in the engine room, but try anyway - I may hear it" - it used to
be that I was in the bilge.

Hands, please, for those who have spent more than 100 hours in their
engine rooms in the last month - I have - in addition to doing the
research and running around to fix those things which have cropped up
(Roger, I know you qualified last year)...

PS to Geoff - has the above eased your concerns about our
instruments? It's why we're still here...

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
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"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things
you
didn't do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail
away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails.
Explore.
Dream. Discover." - Mark Twain

Skip Gundlach wrote:


We've already got massive batteries. The issue is properly keeping
them charged. At 750 nominal (less aging) AH, we can go for a long
time with no charge input.

A 750AH bank will require an alternator that can put out about
110A-115A at engine idle to properly recharge them.

This will require a dual belt drive such as is required to drive a
Leece-Neville machine.

If you don't need a dual belt drive with your present alternator, you
have the wrong alternator.

If you discharge this bank by 40%, you have consumed 300AH which must
be replaced with 1.25*300 = 375 AH.

To replace 375 AH you will require 375/115 = 3.3 hours of engine time.

It ain't rocket science.

Nobody said wet cell batteries were efficient, but they are mobile.

Yes I must confess.

In my misspent youth, worked on the engineering team that designed the
great-great-great-great-grandfather of the L/N 4800.

Lew

Skip Gundlach wrote in
oups.com:

The meter went from -48 to +40, and slowly started to come down. The
battery voltage, which, by now, had been down to about 12.1 due to all
the drop, steadily climbed. It quite quickly reached well over 13,
and kept climbing.



POWER is our FRIEND!



Larry
--
Transportation and Support
S/V "Flying Pig"
Ask Skip how a Mercedes runs on old frying oil...(c;

On Thu, 26 Jul 2007 01:51:23 -0000, Skip Gundlach
wrote:

We've already got massive batteries. The issue is properly keeping
them charged. At 750 nominal (less aging) AH, we can go for a long
time with no charge input. But if we don't put in the charge,
eventually the biggest battery bank will be flat, even if nothing is
drawn from it, out of normal charge dissapation (flooded = ?%/
month)...

To recharge 750 AH in a reasonable length of time you need a 3 stage
charging source of 150 to 200 amps (25% of capacity). Don't let Larry
tell you anything different. Wiring of appropriate size is also
required of course.

If you had a generator you could do that the way we do - use the
charger half of a high powered inverter/charger. Since you don't, you
will need a seriously high powered alternator with an external
regulator. An alternator of 200 amp capacity will typically be a
large frame Leece-Neville, require two drive belts, and quite possibly
some custom work on your engine drive sheaves and alternator mount.
All of this is not cheap of course, and it will take some shopping
around just to find someone qualified to do the work. Nothing less is
going to get the job done however.

July 21st - Hot time in the old town, tonight

So, now a few days later, we're correcting these electrical problems
before
trying to determine exactly what's up with various instruments. One
clue
about all this was found last night on the way back from the showers:

As I walked down the extremely long dock, I noticed what seemed to be
a
strobe light atop someone's mast.
That someone was me, and the wind speed instrument's cups were
interfering
with the view as they went around, making it flicker. Once I had that
figured out, as that phenomenon stopped as I got far enough along
to have the cups in front of (rather than obscuring) the view of the
lens,
I continued on. Then it looked as
though it was dimming/burning. I stepped back, and it stopped. Forward
and
it started again. WTF???

The way navigation lights work, in order for people who are looking at
your
boat at night, is to have certain lights visible from certain angles.
When
you get past that angle the visible light disappears. So, what I'd
been
seeing wasn't our anchor light - it was the green light showing from
the
right side of the top of the mast. I'd thought it looked a bit odd, as
the
white anchor light is very bright and sort of blue in color. No
wonder...


But, back to the story, as I got closer to the boat, I found the green
light
disappeared (which is how it's supposed to do) - but not before the
red
light started to show up and confuse the view. Being much lower than
the
mast and not off a half mile or more, the view was very small as
compared to
the output of the light. Thus it looked as though it was getting dim -
but
in reality, it was showing both red and green together, and as I got
closer,
red only. Because I was nearly directly under it, I didn't get much of
the
light by that time, making it difficult to determine what it was.
Walking
further down the dock allowed me to see more of the light, to the
point
where the red and white were visible at the same time. BRIGHT red
light...

So... The red light's lit - at least for now. I'd lit the nav light
when we
were powering everything we could touch in order to see how much the
alternator was putting out, and had forgotten to turn it off. If in
fact
it's not broken, I presume it to also be a voltage issue (most of our
instruments have been misbehaving - see the "how revolting" post - we
presume them to be under-supplied).

So... Perhaps all of our electronic glitches (the radio aside - one of
my
contacts has provided the link to the solution in our Ham and SSB
radio) can
be resolved merely with the application of adequate power.

Today has been somewhat of a lay-day, in boatyard terms, in that not a
great
deal has happened. I've restowed the maelstrom, which resulted when
Lydia
emptied our storage that hid the wiring I needed for final
installation on
the new charger. In the process, I uncovered the other spare
alternator.
It's got labeling on it saying it's 70A. I'll install that tomorrow,
along
with a new belt, as the one that was on it has pretty well been used
up.
There's also some possibility that the worn belt was a contributing
factor -
who knows? - maybe they are *all* 70A and we're just not able to pull
it out
of them?

I'll also be making the final wiring of the charger. It's been in a
temporary location as we were doing our testing. If the new alternator
and
belt *does* produce that higher amperage, then we'll keep it. If not,
we're
in for some higher output, new, charging on the engine.

Tonight we had a lovely evening aboard an Island Packet whose owners
have
been following our adventures on line. We find we're notorious (in the
definitive, not pejorative, sense of the word) as a result of the
internet.
Earlier today there were a half-dozen dock-walkers from other boats
who
stopped by and marveled at what we'd done and been through. They also
admired the burnt-out hulk of our old massive battery charger, sitting
on
the dock, waiting for removal...

I've also worked on pictures. I absolutely detest Shutterfly, but if
one has
only a dialup connection, those tiny thumbnails will be visible
without
waiting an entire day to see them. So, there are pix at
http://share.shutterfly.com/action/w...0CcN3DFqybMXNw.
However,
there's also pix at our gallery www.justpickone.org/skip/gallery -
click the
first picture, and follow the links. The thumbnails in those galleries
are
as big as the shutterfly full pix and can be clicked to see larger
detail if
you like. Getting those together and up kept us up late again, so I'll
try
to sleep late before I head back into the engine room!

As I write, it's now Sunday Morning, and I'm off to deliver the USB
hard
drive I copied 20Gigabytes of music onto for our Island Packet
friends,
coffee in hand. Then it's back into the engine room!

Having now exited the engine room, there's lots done there. It remains
to
test it all. However, the battery condition is now in the "charged"
zone for
each of the dozen cells, where none of them were there on our first
reading
a few days ago.

Unfortunately for me, the alternator which I put on (the one with the
70A
label) had a stripped mounting tab, and I had to come up with a bolt
which
would go through in order to put a nut on it on the other side. Dad's
Hardware Store (the name the kids used to give my supplies at my land-
based
home, cuz any time they needed something, it was available, in stock)
has
migrated to being Dad's Chandlery. While it's still being stocked, and
therefore we didn't have the truly proper bolt for the application, we
did,
indeed have a makeshift solution. That temporary fix will be resolved
as we
get confirmation of whether or not the alternator will actually keep
up with
our loads, and fill the batteries as well.

Now that our refrigeration (34.3 currently) and freezer (7.1
currently) is
no longer a concern, and we don't have to worry about a repair person
coming
aboard to work on it, we'll probably ditch the lovely electrical
supply
here, and anchor out to test out our ability to make power on the
hook.
We'll no longer be able to leave our laptops up all the time, but when
we're
cruising, we won't be able to do it then, either. So, we'll get into
our
cruising mode.

And, perhaps, tomorrow, we'll do our electrical loads test, recording
each
and every thing we use as to how much power it consumes. From that,
we'll be
able to develop a power budget, making sure we always have more power
coming
in (over the long haul) than we are spending. We have what, for most
boats
this size, is a massive battery bank, so our storage should be
sufficient to
handle low-power-generation days. We just need to be able to identify
our
loads, and utilize our power judiciously.

So, I'll leave you here, and we'll go get some dinner. Fortunately for
us,
it's moderated in heat recently, which makes being below in the engine
room
much more pleasant. That's the forecast for the next couple of days;
perhaps
we can get all of our heavy lifting done before it gets hot, and
concentrate
on some seatrialing to prove out what we've done.

Stay tuned :{))


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)