horstenegger
New Member
- Joined
- May 30, 2021
- Messages
- 29
Hello everyone,
Although I would describe myself as someone with interest and affinity for all things tech, I'm quite inexperienced when it comes to electrics. Also, I'm great at languages i.e. I suck at making calculations. I also haven't participated much on forums in general thus far, so please forgive me for breaching any written or unwritten rules.
So, not being quite sure to begin, or even what to ask, I'll just jot down what comes to mind right now and do my best to keep this as compressed as possible.
I'm moving onto a sailing catamaran full time, and intend to rely on solar 99% of the time (i.e. anchoring over marinas with shorepower). The boat is equipped with 12V DC appliances / instruments and 230V AC outlets (we're in Europe). Everything after the battery bank has already been installed by a professional marine electrician. However, he ran out of time, so I'm taking care of the power generation and storage myself. Based on my guesstimates on worst case scenario power consumption, I've purchased the following:
What may be useful to mention in order to avoid topic deviation: Due to our relatively high solar output and easily expandable battery bank, as well as the fact that we'll be following the sun and avoiding the darker / colder seasons, charging from alternators and/or generator aren't part of the plan, at least not for now.
It would be awesome to get some of your recommendations / advice on the points above, as well as on anything I haven't thought of / mentioned yet. I'm also more than open to suggestions on other / non-Victron equipment than mentioned in my 'still to purchase' list, as long as it's relatively easily available in Europe. Many thanks in advance!
-Lex
Although I would describe myself as someone with interest and affinity for all things tech, I'm quite inexperienced when it comes to electrics. Also, I'm great at languages i.e. I suck at making calculations. I also haven't participated much on forums in general thus far, so please forgive me for breaching any written or unwritten rules.
So, not being quite sure to begin, or even what to ask, I'll just jot down what comes to mind right now and do my best to keep this as compressed as possible.
I'm moving onto a sailing catamaran full time, and intend to rely on solar 99% of the time (i.e. anchoring over marinas with shorepower). The boat is equipped with 12V DC appliances / instruments and 230V AC outlets (we're in Europe). Everything after the battery bank has already been installed by a professional marine electrician. However, he ran out of time, so I'm taking care of the power generation and storage myself. Based on my guesstimates on worst case scenario power consumption, I've purchased the following:
- 5X TrinaSolar 400W panels (41,2 Voc), of which 3 will be mounted at the stern of the boat (virtually no shade), and one on each side of the salon roof (possibly some shade from the mainsail at times on either side)
- 56X Fortune cells (for either a 1400Ah battery bank @ 12V, or 700Ah @ 24V if that's better)
- 14X JBD (Overkill) BMS, although I may not need them all if I end up building a 24V battery bank instead
- Victron Multiplus Charger / Inverter
- Victron BatteryProtect (although unsure which one)
- Victron smart MPPTs, although unsure how many and which ones
- Victron CerboGX + display + RPi with Victron's open source Venus OS in order to make compatible with our non-Victron batteries and BMS, or a full non-Victron home-brew equivalent to CerboGX on a RPi instead (which I think I prefer, but haven't delved into yet)
- Master fuse for the battery bank (BlueSea Class-T?)
- Solar panel wiring. Still pretty clueless on that one.
- I'm reading a lot of setups include both one or more BMS and a (smart)shunt, while our electrician stated that shunts are redundant if you already have a BMS. In which cases would implementing a (smart)shunt be recommendable, and how?
- The boat has a 12V setup, but some experts (including Will) recommend setting up a 24V battery bank when the distance (i.e. cable length) from the solar panels to the batteries reaches a certain point and/or power consumption is relatively high. But where's that line? And does it make sense to use a 24V battery bank on a 12V boat? Obviously we would need a 24V->12V converter after the batteries, which results in decreased efficiency, but others argue that there are such efficient converters nowadays and the benefits are greater than that sacrifice.
- Am I right to think it's best to implement 3 MPPTs: one for the 3 panels at the stern and one for each on the salon roof? And how 'heavy' should they be?
- I've seen similar setups with BMS and a Cyrix-Li-charge 12/24V-120A intelligent charge relay, but haven't been able to find an explanation as to why this would be needed / recommendable. Seems a bit redundant to me but probably I'm missing something.
- Other questions / considerations. I'm pretty sure there's a few that I should be asking which I'm still ignorant about at this point.
What may be useful to mention in order to avoid topic deviation: Due to our relatively high solar output and easily expandable battery bank, as well as the fact that we'll be following the sun and avoiding the darker / colder seasons, charging from alternators and/or generator aren't part of the plan, at least not for now.
It would be awesome to get some of your recommendations / advice on the points above, as well as on anything I haven't thought of / mentioned yet. I'm also more than open to suggestions on other / non-Victron equipment than mentioned in my 'still to purchase' list, as long as it's relatively easily available in Europe. Many thanks in advance!
-Lex
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