welcome back to Distant Shores. This
time we're exploring the beautiful
waters of the Bahamas. Last time on
Distant Shores we talked about volts
amps watts and the like and how much power
we use for the different parts
of the boat this time we're going to
talk about how we generate power and how
much power we need and where it comes
from onboard and how you can do it too
so this is a great time to be collecting
solar power down here in the Bahamas
anywhere between ten and three
you're getting pretty high output as the
Sun is really coming overhead. We have
five 100 watt panels up here on this
arch. the plan was to get the panel's up
above the deck and also provide shade in
the back of the cockpit as it's doing
now but also to make sure that there
wasn't shade on top of the panels is one
of the most important things that the
panels are always in the Sun even a
small amount of shade across a panel can
reduce its output almost in half or even
entirely for just 10% of the panel
covered could cut 100% of the power out
of it. Each of these panels weighs 8
kilograms for a total of 40 kilos which
is about 90 pounds that's the weight of
the panels and then the arch itself
weighs about 60 pounds. We wanted to put
a lot of panels on would be great but I
didn't want to compromise the boats
performance by having too much weight
high up and too big of a heavy arch on
the back and windage and stormy
conditions and stuff.
A simple rule of thumb for how much
power you can get out of a solar panel
is roughly five times the value of the
panel will equal what it'll produce per
day so you can say on average if it's a
100 watt panel you'd hope to get 500
watts for an entire day out of it
obviously it doesn't work at night and
that just is a formula that sort of
simplifies it for use in the typical
sunny climates where we sail down south
and that gives you a rule of thumb for
when you're planning what you're going to
get it's really important to not have
shade on the panels and then you can
hope to get five times the panels output
now I've got an app on my phone made by
the panel controller that can tell you
how much power we've got out of the
panel so it's showing that we're getting
say 400 watts or so and that we're
getting a history back here that it
shows you all of the past few days that
we've got how much power we've got out
of the panel's so we know what we're
producing.  The last important factor for
setting up a solar arch is to
have a controller because you do have to
regulate the power that comes out of the
panel to put that into the battery so
it matches the voltages that are
coming out of the panel as the Sun
goes up the panel produces more the
Sun Goes Down and it still produces
enough power to go in the battery. The
best thing to do is to get a maximum
power point controller
they're called MPPT controllers they're
a little expensive but they make sure
that you get the most power out of the
panel's into the battery bank
so today we're exploring out here in the
shallow waters we're just going to be
moving to a new Anchorage and we're not
using very much engine time but that's
going to do a fair bit of what we need
for our power use. From last episode's
budget we came up with a total power of
somewhere between two and a half
kilowatts and four kilowatts total power
used. Today we're going to be generating
power partly with the Sun as we've got a
nice sunny day down here and partly with
our "on engine generator" it's the
other way we generate power and the on
engine generator can put out up to six
kilowatts at the moment we're generating
something like five and a half or six
and the rest the power we need
will come from the Sun now the nice
thing about such a big powerful
generator is it doesn't take very long
to put in a couple of kilowatts and then
we get a couple more kilowatts from the
Sun and that's all we need for the day
so we can get even if it's fifteen or
twenty minutes maximum engine running
timers we're going to move around here
in the harbor that'll probably be enough
this has been another wonderful day in
the Bahamas with lots of Sun so we've
collected a fair bit of power from our
solar panels. It seems like we'd get more
than two kilowatts from them today now
we've also run the water maker quite a
bit so our use is high around four
kilowatts so we need about two more kilowatts. So
what I'm gonna do now is just start the
"on engine" generator that'll give us the
rest of the power so now with the engine
going I can just set it to around 1200
rpm and that's sufficient to generate up
to six kilowatts in that case to get 2 more
I'll need to run it for about twenty
minutes that's all we should need to do
now let's go and I'll show you around
the components of how the on engine
generator works. The on engine generator
lives naturally on the engine
we've had the system now for a whole
year this is the heart of it right here
that is the generator itself spinning on this nifty belt system running down there
and that can generate over 6.5 kilowatts of power
It doesn't have a controller on it. The controller is over here.
Do you want to show them? PAUL 2: Sorry I didn't know you were starting
already I was having a nap. Okay this is
the other part of the on engine
generator the brains of the whole thing
this unit takes the power that comes out
of the three phases of the generator and
turns them into the right amount of
current and also very very carefully
protects everything about what the engine is doing
whether you're operating the engine at high speed
whether you've got it in gear and uses
only the surplus power so it never will
overload the engine that's totally
critical the only other component of
this is the big old battery bank that
can accept a really high rate of charge
so this system is extremely good
with lithium batteries
or if you're working with batteries like
we've got which are thin plate pure lead
batteries that can take a really high
charge
there you go Thanks so there you go
solar power on board and today we're
going to average something like two and
a half kilowatts and we're using maybe
three so the fact that we ran our
generator for just a few minutes puts in
enough and then the solar power finishes
charging it up while I have a nap thanks
for watching and thanks to all of you
who suggested this video series about
marine power if you missed the first two
videos in the series here are the links
and if you have any questions I'd be
happy to answer them in the comments
below let us know what other topics
you'd like to see videos about too and
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