Solar power 12v & 32v battery charging

[q240z]

What happens when I add this to the equation: our Xantrex True Charge 40 appears to have died yesterday. We bought it last fall. It's now outside of the warranty period. No word yet from the manufacturer if they'll stand behind their product. I'm hooking up the 40-year old ferroresonant charger that came standard with the boat for now, and I'm on the dock instead of out on the hook.

So, old ferro unit + solar + existing 2500w cheapo inverter or a new inverter charger? These things are never easy...

[dastahl]

Solar power takes up a lot of space. I have a 4.8 KW array on my house but it takes up the entire roof and cost $45K installed, (of which I paid a third and the evil power company paid 2/3) It does take care of all the electric for the two of us in the northeast.

The panels are said to last 20 years, but on the ocean I would use 10. Find out how much space you have and see how big an array you can get. Then you can reasonably calculate how many KW you can feed into your system. An 8KW gen set burns about $2.40/hour of diesel and cost $10K, thats $.30 per KW hour for fuel. Gen Sets require maintenance of may be $.10 KW. If you are only using the Gen Set then that is your cost per KW about $.40/KW.

To see how much you use, you may be able to find out by looking at your dock side electric bill.

The solar panels are basically free once installed. The battery system is the only part that will require periodic replacement before 10 years. So if you know how much you will use and you know the Gen Set is around $.40/KW then you can caculate your pay back.

IMHO Even though I hate the noise, wind generators seem to me to more effective for boats.

Have a sunny day.

[thoward]

I think if I were a live aboard I would look in to something like this
http://www.whispergen.com/main/marine/
It is automatic and can heat the water. Even a regular DC generator could be setup to heat the water and be automatic which is nice if you are absent for a period.