CHARGING ON THE WIND

Finally got back on the boat Memorial Day after a month away. Beautiful day somewhat cool and windy. My 48 Volt Marine Air X turbine was spinning away charging the batteries. As I sat there I was waiting to see it stop as it usually does on sunny days such as this because the solar panels manage to keep things charged up. In fact The 48 volt Air X is usually stopped much of the day as the solar panels do most of the charging. But, for some reason it was spinning longer than usual,  When I went into BIANKA's cabin I soon found out the reason.

What happened was the  Morningstar ProStar PS-15M-48V, 15 Amp 48 Volt Charge Controller was still in over voltage disconnect mode and had not been charging the battery bank for the last month. A month ago I used the Dual Pro 4 Bank Charger to top off and balance the four 8A4D batteries using grid power. The voltage applied to the battery bank by the charger can reach 62 volts at some point in the charge cycle. The Morningstar controller senses this as an over voltage condition and disconnects the solar panels from the battery. It's a safety feature of the controller. I just need to hit the reset button on the Morningstar controller after the Dual Pro finishes it's charge and it starts charging normally. Apparently, I forgot to do this the last time before I left the boat so the only charging of the propulsion bank for the past month was from the Marine Air X turbine. Not a problem when one has multiple ways to charge the battery bank. Nice to know the boat is always fueled up with energy even if one of the systems is accidentally disconnected. This sailor always likes to have a backup. With electric propulsion it's easy to have multiple backups for charging.