On Thu, 4 Jun 2009 13:24:14 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

OK

I have a twin engine houseboat and want to add an inverter and battery
bank. I've been working up the plan but have some questions I hope
could be answered here.

First the boat as configured:

Twin gas engine (350HP Crusader)
7.5Kw Kohler Generator
3 Batteries - 1 Group 27 dual purpose for each engine (also run house)
and 1 Group 24 for Genset
ProMariner Tournament 150 smart charger (15A 3 output distributed
charging)
3000w peak 1500W continous inverter

I'm looking at adding a remote battery bank (30' from engine room)
with (4) 6v 220Ah batteries for a total of 440Ah at 12v. My thought is
to use a Blue Sea 7600 ACR feeding the power through 4G cable from the
engine room to the remote battery bank. The ACR has a current limiting
feature which will allow me to get by with the smaller cable since the
connection is only needed for charging. I'm not married to this
approach and am open to alternate suggestions. The output of the
inverter will connect into 2 Blue Sea 8366 (3 position + off) rotary
AC switch which will then feed into the existing breaker panels.

I would try to get the inverter batteries as close to the engines
(charging source) as possible, and make the AC run longer. Doing this
will produce less voltage drop in the 12 volt wiring while charging
the batteries, possibly permitting a smaller cable.


--
Peter Bennett, VE7CEI
peterbb4 (at) interchange.ubc.ca
GPS and NMEA info: http://vancouver-webpages.com/peter
Vancouver Power Squadron: http://vancouver.powersquadron.ca

On Thu, 04 Jun 2009 17:44:04 -0700, Peter Bennett
wrote:

On Thu, 4 Jun 2009 13:24:14 -0700 (PDT), wrote:

OK

I have a twin engine houseboat and want to add an inverter and battery
bank. I've been working up the plan but have some questions I hope
could be answered here.

First the boat as configured:

Twin gas engine (350HP Crusader)
7.5Kw Kohler Generator
3 Batteries - 1 Group 27 dual purpose for each engine (also run house)
and 1 Group 24 for Genset
ProMariner Tournament 150 smart charger (15A 3 output distributed
charging)
3000w peak 1500W continous inverter

I'm looking at adding a remote battery bank (30' from engine room)
with (4) 6v 220Ah batteries for a total of 440Ah at 12v. My thought is
to use a Blue Sea 7600 ACR feeding the power through 4G cable from the
engine room to the remote battery bank. The ACR has a current limiting
feature which will allow me to get by with the smaller cable since the
connection is only needed for charging. I'm not married to this
approach and am open to alternate suggestions. The output of the
inverter will connect into 2 Blue Sea 8366 (3 position + off) rotary
AC switch which will then feed into the existing breaker panels.

I would try to get the inverter batteries as close to the engines
(charging source) as possible, and make the AC run longer. Doing this
will produce less voltage drop in the 12 volt wiring while charging
the batteries, possibly permitting a smaller cable.

Hmm... I should have said "get the inverter and its batteries as close
to the charging source as possible"

You want to minimize the length of the high current, low voltage
wiring, as any voltage drop there represents a significant power loss.
The same voltage drop in the 120VAC wiring is relatively
insignificant.

--
Peter Bennett, VE7CEI
peterbb4 (at) interchange.ubc.ca
GPS and NMEA info: http://vancouver-webpages.com/peter
Vancouver Power Squadron: http://vancouver.powersquadron.ca