I have spent the last week and a half analyzing our energy consumption. We have to run the generator way too much. Every morning for about 2-3 hours, and again in the evening for about the same amount of time. Thats 5-6 hours per day!
It's like having kids again... you always have to be home in time to feed the little demons.
We have a battery bank of 10 6volt batteries, wired to give us 12 volts and about 1125 amp hours.
It's a fact of life when it comes to batteries on boats that it gives us a useable amount of about 275 amp hours. All those other amp hours? Goodness only knows but you can't use them or you risk killing off your batteries.
The only way I can get my head around it is to think of it as an agricultural crop that gives a harvest of 275 amp hours, but you have to keep an enormous amount to seed the next crop!
With a lot of help from a bunch of other boating tragics on the Cruisers Forum we identified where much of the energy is going... primarily a few switches we discovered that had been on since we bought the boat and shouldn't have been, and we run 2 fridges and a freezer. By boating standards this is a lot. Compared to land based homes it's very little fridge space really.
With careful energy management we have reduced our generator time down to 2.5 - 3 hours per day without really feeling it at all.
The whole purpose of this exercise was to work out how much we'd need in Solar Panel wattage to reduce, or if possible eliminate generator use except for cloudy or rainy days. If we do achieve this it will only be in the tropics where we will get a lot more sunshine, and much of it overhead.
The analysis was useful, but the answer was already pretty clear to me... as much as I can fit on without our home looking like an aircraft carrier. Solar panels are ugly, but so is a generator thumping away in the background.
I can get 600 watts with 3 panels. Buying the panels was another adventure in itself. There are so many deals on the internet that look great but suddenly become all too hard, or expensive when you try to stitch them up.
I eventually managed to get one big panel that will fit very nicely on the davits and pump out 320 watts in ideal conditions, and another 2 x 140 watts that will sit out of sight on the doghouse. Hopefully this will make a major contribution to our batteries and cut down generator time.
I'm also considering an Air Breeze wind generator to stick way up on the mizzen mast. They work 24/7 as long as there is a bit of wind. By having all these different power sources we may only need the generator as a back up from time to time.
The panels should arrive in a week or so, but in the mean time the anchor chain has to be dragged out, all 300 foot of it, and along with the anchors taken down to Baltimor for galvanizing.
They don't sand or shotblast there, just acid dip. With a rusty chain this could take a few goes before the old rust is gone and the chain is ready for galvanizing.
To keep cost down we've decided to get creative. If Bob, the property owner here has a concrete mixer, we're going to see if we can throw it in and churn it for half an hour to knock the rust off.
Plan B will be to attach it behind Tom's pickup and drag it down the gravel road for a mile or 2.
Either way I'm determined to only need one acid bath!
Until next time...