Most boats have two types of electrical systems: AC (alternating current), and DC (direct current). AC comes from the shore power cord or from the batteries through an inverter, if you have one. When you don’t have an inverter, then none of your regular plugs will work if you’re not hooked up to shore power. DC comes from the batteries.
The existing AC system wiring was in poor condition and wasn’t marine grade (meaning the wire wasn’t tinned which makes it resistant to corrosion). We installed Ancor Marine triplex marine grade wiring. We also added some outlets for a few reasons: 1) we use a lot of appliances while living aboard at the marina (alarm clock, coffee maker (we use an Aeropress now which takes no electricity), heater/dehumidifier, computers, air purifier and on and on); 2) the existing outlets were located in inconvenient places; and 3) the existing outlets were old and got hot during use (scary). Plus none of the existing outlets were GFCI, so we added one of those to each side of the boat as well.
We changed our shore power set up from the standard twist-type marine plug to a Smart Plug. The Smart Plug is fully waterproof, locks into place and has 20x more contact area to greatly reduce electrical resistance and the chance of arcing. We also moved the plug from the cockpit to the outside of the cockpit combing, so now it’s not a tripping hazard when we get in and out of the cockpit.
The winter of 2017 was a doozy when it came to weather. Our area had almost 200% more rain than usual. Though we only lost power a couple of times and never for very long, we decided to buy a Honda EU2000 generator. Our batteries are slowly dying and if we lost power for any length of time, they would drain quickly. The marina we live in is pretty remote and we have lost power at all times throughout the year. Once we lost power when a great blue heron flew into the overhead power lines. We knew we were going to get a generator eventually, so we thought why not get it now for when we lose power. Of course, since we bought the generator we haven’t lost power once…knock on wood.
The boat came with 3 new AC Delco batteries. One is for the starter and the other two are the house bank, though we believe they’re all tied together somehow (the battery switches are wired weirdly and we can’t figure them out). Right now (2013), this setup is working for us since we are on shore-power 100% of the time and the batteries just run the lights and fans. Down the road, we are going to beef up the DC system.
We also need to modify our battery box or maybe move it or add another one. The surveyor noted that the batteries aren’t strapped down and the terminals don’t have those nifty covers over them. I don’t really like where the batteries are located (under the quarter berth). They are easy to access, but they are hogging valuable storage space. I think moving them to the engine room might be a good idea as long as we can prevent them from getting too hot.
We’ve finally made some decisions on batteries. We are going to buy Firefly Oasis Group31 batteries. These batteries are more expensive than standard AGMs but a small fraction of the cost of lithium batteries. Plus they’re Nigel Calder uses them and gave them high marks.
Here’s what their website has to say:
Firefly’s technology is an innovative material science that removes almost all limitations of current Lead Acid Battery Products. Carbon Foam is an Aero-Space Age material. It is a Composite made of high purity carbon carrying material. It’s used in nozzles of missiles and other energy absorbing applications. It’s bulk density is very low, below 0.04 g/cc and porosity is above 90%
Carbon is not attacked by Acids or Alkalines and it’s highly conductive. Grid is made of Carbon Foam and Active Material is pasted on this grid. Carbon Foam has very high surface area for electro chemical reactions. Due to the inherent and amazing properties of Carbon and 3D Honeycomb structure of the Carbon Foam, it has thousands of micro pores which ultimately provides the following benefits to the Firefly Batteries:
We’ve also decided to keep the batteries under the quarter-berth. Even though we removed the water heater from the engine room and have plenty of room in there for batteries, we think the high temps in the engine room may be a problem. We’re going to build a new battery box that will fit hopefully four 110Ah batteries (3 house-bank and 1 starter).
Well, we changed our minds again though through no fault of our own. We were really excited to try the new Firefly batteries, but we are having a hard time finding them locally. Plus, we’ve been told that since the company moved the manufacturing to India the quality control has been really bad. Some of the batteries fail right away.
After a lot of searching we thought we were going to get Mastervolt AGM Slimline batteries or something similar. The shape is conducive to our battery box and the amp hours seem appropriate. What we FINALLY ended up getting were five 100 amp Battle Born Lithium Iron Phosphate (LiFePO4) batteries.
We ended up choosing the Victron Energy Multiplus 3000 Watt Inverter/Charger. Here’s some specifics form Victron Energy:
- The MultiPlus is a powerful true sine wave inverter, a sophisticated battery charger that features adaptive charge technology, and a high-speed AC transfer switch in a single compact enclosure. Two AC Outputs
- The main output has no-break functionality.
- The MultiPlus takes over the supply to the connected loads in the event of a grid failure or when shore-/generator power is disconnected. This happens so fast (less than 20 milliseconds) that computers and other electronic equipment will continue to operate without disruption.
- The second output is live only when AC is available on the input of the MultiPlus.
- Loads that should not discharge the battery, like a water heater for example, can be connected to this output (second output available on models rated at 3kVA and more).
- The MultiPlus is a very powerful battery charger. It will therefore draw a lot of current from the generator or shore side supply (nearly 20 A per 3 kVA MultiPlus at 120 VAC). With the Multi Control Panel a maximum generator or shore current can be set. The MultiPlus will then take account of other AC loads and use whatever is extra for charging, thus preventing the generator or shore supply from being overloaded.
- The main output provides a powerful charge to the battery system by means of advanced ‘adaptive charge’ software. The software fine-tunes the three stage automatic process to suit the condition of the battery, and adds a fourth stage for long periods of float charging. In addition to this, the MultiPlus will charge a second battery using an independent trickle charge output intended for a main engine or generator starter battery.
We chose New Powa 175 Watt panels and a Victron MPPT 100 volt 30 amp charge controller. The tricky part was figuring out how to mount them. We’re limited by the canoe stern of our boat and didn’t want to add a big solar arch to the back. We modified the lifelines at the back of the cockpit and change them to 7/8″ stainless steel tubing. By adding bimini hardware to the panels we were able to make them pivot up and down to get a better angle on the sun.
Our old alternator had an internal voltage regulator. Our new alternator also has an internal voltage regulator but we wired it to bypass it so we could use an external one. We bought an external Balmar Max Charge MC-614 Voltage Regulator instead. Some features include:
We mounted the external voltage regulator in the battery compartment under the starboard side quarter berth. In this location it’s close to the batteries and alternator, but away from the heat generated from the engine.
It has to be programmed for your system specifically. Howtomarine.com has a great video about programming it. These are the parameters we set:
Pro:
PrA:
Since the headliner is down and we’re up to our eyeballs in unfinished boat projects we thought now is the perfect time to start yet another project – upgrading the cabin lights. We wanted to go with LED lights, until we started researching how expensive they were (yeow!) Evidently, LEDs used in your home are not the same LEDs used on a boat. Household LEDs, which run off AC power, cannot handle fluctuating DC voltage found on a boat. There have been several stories about boats catching fire or burning down because of cheap LEDs. Therefore, marine LEDs must have some sort of voltage regulator or current converter. Rich found Marinebeam.com. and they sell LEDs with constant current converter chip-sets to retrofit your existing fixtures and they’re affordable.
The strip lights we’re using as under-cabinet lighting are chained together by USB cables. The bad news is Rich had to make the USB connectors because they came with only one male connector and the on/off switch. In order to chain them together, we needed USB connectors with a male on one end and a female on the other end.
During the survey we had a heck of a time figuring out what worked and what didn’t because fuses were blown, missing, or just loose. When we moved the boat from Richmond to Isleton we didn’t have a depth sounder for part of the way because the fuse was loose. And during that trip we found out how wet things can get in the companionway, which is where the breaker panel is located. Granted, it doesn’t look like it’s been a problem in the past 36 years, but since we have the opportunity to make it better, why not? So we’ve decided to move the breaker panel from under the companionway steps to the nav station. We ordered a Blue Sea System AC Main plus 6 Positions/DC Main plus 18 Positions.
We finally installed the Blue Sea Systems breaker panel. We moved the breaker panel from under the companionway steps to the navigation station. Rich built a nice teak frame with black ABS plastic backing for it. There’s also room for some other gauges like a Raymarine i70s Multifunction Instrument Display, the bilge pump switch and maybe the VHF radio. The AC system is switched over completely to the new panel.
The original red and green bow lights on Ramble On do not meet Coast Guard regulations for a boat of our size of 2 nm (they only reach 1 nm). We ordered LED red and green lights from Marine Beam along with a tri-color/anchor combo masthead light, a stern light, and a combination steaming and deck light. We ran new wires through a tiny tube that runs through the stern rail. The bow pulpit also has a tiny tube for the wires, and we’ll have to run new wire through it as well.
While working on the steaming/deck light we found wires run down from the top of the mast to the deck where they’re joined in a junction block, then they go to the bottom of the compression post into the bilge to another junction block. From there they go to the breaker panel. So there is no way to run new or additional wires up the mast until we unstep the thing.
