GnrlPatton
Well-Known Member
- Jul 12, 2010
- 716
- Boat Info
- Current: 1998 370 Express Cruiser
Sold:1988 230 Weekender
- Engines
- Twin Cat 3116T
Very nice. I came across a YT channel for Solar Power and he's a huge proponent of the Lithiums. I'm so done with my flooded golf cart batteries, they just don't have the capacity I need, so I'm looking at redoing my house system with the Lithiums. Have you decided on which batteries you are going with? I'm looking at something similar to this: https://www.mobile-solarpower.com/simplified-400-watt-fewer-wires-and-alternator-charging.htmlNow this is the configuration we are working on for the boat I have now. This is a Lithium batter powered Inverter/Charger arrangement with automatic generator start that provides 220VAC to power some of the 220VAC equipment on the boat. The salient difference here is there is a large isolation transformer consequently the common for the entire boat is derived from the boat's ground and a secondary tap on the transformer and no need to switch the common. And, this model inverter/chargers manage two independent power sources.
Have you thought about alternator protection? Lithiums will suck as much juice as they can, and unless you have a dedicated DC-DC charge controller in place, you can damage your alternator. The Renogy unit in the link above has that protection built in, I'm not sure about the Victron's in your diagram but assume they would.
Would love to hear your thoughts once you get it going, I have mostly what I need, but would probably change out my current solar controller with the Renogy (or Victron, not sure yet) unit and then of course shell out the big bucks for the LiFePo's.
Kevin