Why Do My Boat Batteries Drain When Connected to Shore Power?
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- Опубліковано 22 сер 2024
- Alex wrote to ask us about his battery charger while connected to shore power. He wants to know, "When my boat is connected to shore with full 12V lighting and electronics running - is the battery charger that's connected to the battery banks supposed to sufficiently keep up with the batteries when under load? And not let the batteries drain? Any workarounds?"
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Thanks Jeff! Closing in on 30,000...congrats!
Thanks RB for noticing, it's a big milestone for us.
Thanks! I have an 40 amp charge on a 380 amp (180 usable) battery bank. Works well. Finally adding solar this year.
Good stuff!
Great tip ! Indeed I did completely forget this.
Glad it was helpful!
Just installed a Xantrax 100ah charger, I turned everything possible on the boat on and was using 48amps. Using the Victron Battery Monitor, I was only "netting" 52amps. Thanks for the great videos!!
Glad to help Eric.
That’s a real good question….that charger is too small for a modern boat unless it’s a little 20 ft or somthing day sailer.?…they should have at least a 50 amp or 100 depending on what they run…so it can do its job quickly and live like a first world boater… headroom is your friend when charging…
so true
Thanks Anthony.
Hello Jeff I'm Con from Greece. I have a question for you. I have seen a lot of electrical plan's in several sites on internet that shows when there is an aluminum tank you have to ground it with a negative cable samwer out of the boat to the engine or samwer else .is that necessary?
Good point, we frequently see a ground connection at a fuel tank and the fuel filler inlet as well, it's a way to prevent sparks.
Such good information! I have a question. Do inverters have some form of synchronization with of the 60 cycle AC waveform provided by 'shore power'?
Some of them do, they enable shore power and inverter to add together for short periods of time, helps prevent short shorepower breaker.
Brilliant !
Thanks Bob.
Jeff love your videos! Question - what do you think about installing local inverters as opposed to a central inverter. I want to supply power underway to my ac refrigerator. Rather than install a central inverter system I’ve thought to just put an inverter / battery near the fridge and plug it into the inverter. Upside is easy do it myself without wiring into the central ac board. What’s the downside?
Other then cost and idle inverter power, no down side that i can think of.
When you use (2) 6 volt 240 ah batteries wire in a series configuration how do charge them? Do I use a 12 volt or use a 6 volt?
Hi Sonny, you'll want to charge the 2 GC batteries in series with a 12 volt charger.
Jeff, are there any chargers that could throttle their output based on what the shunt is showing? I'm thinking of a scenario where a boat has a 100Ah house bank, but the loads still could be significant, maybe 80A. A 150A charger would likely be too much for the battery itself, but if it throttled its output so the BATTERY was getting 50A (but total charger output was 130A), there'd be a good balance. It seems like sizing the charger for (loads+recharge) could make it too big for the times when the loads were off, "if only there was a better way".
I believe all chargers will ramp down the charge as the battery gets full
To my knowledge, battery chargers are voltage and time driven as they charge through a 3 phase charging program. Not aware of a charger that interconnects to the shunt for adjusting charging.
What about the shorepower output?
Here in the uk, we have 240volt mains, but I think it's 16 amps.
I have a 5 amp smart charger from automobile days, and 600ah notional battery capacity.
It takes my charger 24 hours! But at least I know the batteries are being treated gently!
you don't want to treat batteries gently. You actually want to force high charge when they are low. Good / name brand batteries will have a posted min charge rate. For example lifeline AGMs require at least a .2c charge for max lifespan. Which would be a 120a charger for a 600a battery bank. Firefly batteries actually require 0.4c or a 240a charger for a 600ah bank.
With a 5 amp charger you are barely charging. If a fridge and a couple lights are on, you are only breaking even. not even charging any more
a 16a 230v shorepower would run a ~200a 12v charger with nothing else on.
The charger determines the charging ability, not the shorepower unless your getting into very large boats with 50 to 100 amp service or whatever.. obviously you must have the power from shore to run the boats loads AND the power the chargers AC draw,to charge the batts… without head room ,everything can run hot or take forever to charge…always buy bigger than what you need.
Air. Conditioning is the big issue in this case, I bet.
most definitely.
Jeff love your videos! Question - what do you think about installing local inverters as opposed to a central inverter. I want to supply power underway to my ac refrigerator. Rather than install a central inverter system I’ve thought to just put an inverter / battery near the fridge and plug it into the inverter. Upside is easy do it myself without wiring into the central ac board. What’s the downside?
.
Hey Jeff. See that you posted then edited a reply. Let me give a little more context. If I put a lithium battery in the main system, then I need to worry about alternator issues and isolating the new lithium from the engines. Some have warned me that Lithium is not yet foolproof enough for power to the dc side of house because if the bus shuts down the battery to protect itself then whole house system with navigation could go offline while running. Then also need to tear apart the ac panel. By just plugging invereter with battery into ac outlet and running say 4 items from there, the worst could happen is my refrigerator shuts down. I’ll probably go with the main system upgrade but think it’s an interesting option