AN ENERGY EPIPHANY

When I bought my electric propulsion system for BIANKA back in 2008 I ordered with it a Sevcon 48 volt to 12 volt DC converter.

I never got around to installing it because there was no pressing need.  I have a separate 12 volt house bank on board that provides all the boats 12 volt needs. I forgot about the Sevcon converter.

When I turned my ENGEL cooler into a freezer there was addition drain on the 12 volt battery bank as should be expected.

But, the batteries and solar panels were able to keep up pretty good. But, when I also started to use my laptop too which draws about the same current as the ENGEL in freezer mode (about 2.7 amps) I began to get concerned about draining the batteries. I could run the Honda generator to charge things up. But, I try to minimize it's use as much as possible.
While riding out the gusts of Hurricane Earl I had an energy Epiphany. As the wind gusts from Earl were flowing passed the boat. I noticed that my 48 volt Marine Air-X wind generator was stopped. This was because my 48 volt battery bank for my electric propulsion system was already fully charged and had been for days. I thought what a shame all that wind energy flowing past the boat and I can not use it. Then I remembered the Sevcon converter I had bought.  Ah Ha! I can hook it up and use it to power the laptop from the 48 volt bank and let the regular house bank just handle the freezer and other 12 volt needs.  I took a little while to find Sevcon unit buried in a seldom used locker.

Originally, it was designed to plug into the ASMO Marine controller box via two Anderson Powerpole connectors. But, I was already using those jacks for the solar and wind inputs to the 48 volt battery bank.

What to do?  I really did not want to disconnect the solar and wind generator from the 48 volt bank every time I want to use the converter.  Then in another "Ah Ha" moment I remembered my 48 volt Morningstar Solar controller had a 48 volt tap available. So I took two Anderson Power pole connectors and attached them to the 48 volt output connectors of the Morningstar unit and plugged the Sevcon unit into those connectors.

Now I can run my laptop using the 48 volt solar panels and  wind generator for  energy without worrying about drawing down the 12 volt house bank.  Having more options is one of the added side benefits of electric propulsion that I am appreciating and using more and more as time goes on.

WHAT WORKS ON BOARD: Powerstar DC Converter

Before I bought BIANKA I had a 24 foot Bristol. A fine boat of which I still have fond memories cruising with. When I bought BIANKA there were not many things I took from the Bristol. One of the things I did take was this:

A Powerstar DC converter. It plugged into the single 12 volt cigarette lighter jack on board the Bristol and put out 120 volts on it's AC jack. It was a simple device you plugged it in to the 12 volt socket and a red light came on the showed the 120 volt outlet had voltage on it and you plugged in whatever AC device you wanted to use as long as it was rated 200 watts or lower and not too fussy about pure sine waves.

The reason I bought it was to power my new 1986 Toshiba 1100+ laptop.

It had two three and a half inch disk drives used MS-DOS and had NO hard drive and a monochrome LCD screen to boot. And to think it only cost about $1500 dollars in 1986!. Real whiz bang technology at the time. I try not to think to much that my current computer. You know the one with all the USB ports, Hundreds of giga bites hard drive and DVD burner only cost about a third of what I paid for that Toshiba. Of course the Toshiba still works but, like the other seven or eight computers I have bought in my lifetime it is never used today.

But, the DC converter still functions on board BIANKA. It can not be used to power my new laptop because the AC voltage put out by the Powerstar converter is a rather crude approximation of a pure AC sine wave and will fry most modern switching power supplies used in electronic devices. But, the Powerstar will power a Braun hand blender with no problems. So that means yummy Banana pancakes for breakfast as well as other treats from the galley. It has also come in useful many times to power things like the Dremel tool which is used for many projects on board. It's one of the things that really works on board. Even twenty years plus years after I bought it.