what's up guys welcome back to another video
and if you guys are new to our channel
i'm andrea
i'm alejo
and we've been living on our sailboat for the past
about 20 months
we live on a lagoon 420
it's a sailing catamaran
and today we're gonna be giving you a tour of our electric system
so if you guys want to see a tour of like the entire boat
you guys can check out the video here
that i'm showing up here or here not sure but
today we will be focusing only on the electric system as that is the heart of our boat
right
we also have two battery banks in the starboard side of our boat
to create two 48V banks
caught a fish people
hakuna matata it means no worries
we are going more into depth that about our
solar power system
our inverter
our generator
and how we make this boat work
because everything is electric except our engines
the only thing that we have that is propane is the barbecue which is outside completely separated from the boat
everything else is um electric
that's including the water maker including the oven um air conditioning units
everything which we're gonna talk about today
we will be sharing with you
how much we have in terms of solar
how much each appliance consumes in terms of um watts right
the electric consumption
and how our batteries have worked for us
our lithium batteries and all about that
so let's get started
let's start with our solar panels and let's go up there
and sorry guys we are doing laundry right now
so guys we have six solar panels each one is of 295 watts
however they don't have a 100% efficiency
they're efficient at about 280 watts
each panel is 52 volts connected in series it makes 316 volts
and it goes straight to our mppt controller
also guys how the panels are mounted into the bimini of the boat is by this plastic mount
this ones
so it's good because it leaves a little bit of space underneath the panel
so they can breathe and they don't get like super hot
and also we don't have a solar arch
so let me show you how they mounted the panels
they have like rails so there's underneath
here there's a rail like this right here
and then another rail right here
like this
underneath the panels this is how they are mounted they have like a bracket holding two panels
and they are attached here to the bimini
it's pretty simple works out
we have been a category two hurricane or three
and they haven't flown away
no movement at all so yeah it's pretty good
so guys this is where the heart of our entire boat sits at
our inverter is right here and our entire boat just runs off the inverter
this means that we always have ac power
now the solar panels send the energy to the mppt which is the red sma panel that you guys see right there
and the mppt then sends the the energy to the inverter
this mppt actually converts the energy from 316 volts it converts it into ac power which is going to be 220 to 240 volts
once we have the energy on the inverter the inverter if we are using energy obviously the inverter
sends the energy whether we're using water maker air conditioning or just cooking or
you know washing the dishes or whatever it is that we're doing
well not washing the dishes
using the dishwasher
then it sends all the energy to the dishwasher now if we're not using that energy it then sends it to the lithium batteries
which we're gonna show you guys on the other room
we also have two battery banks in the starboard side of our boat
and they are the ones that run the 12 volts in the boat
this means that they run the navigation systems it runs the for instance like the anchor light
the navigational lights
so normally if we turn on the starboard engine we are able to charge that 12 volt bank system
but whenever we're not
we're let's say we're anchored right now and we're not turning on the starboard engine
then at that point we have an ac to dc converter and that is what's going to change the
energy from 220 change it into 12 volts so that it can always keep those 12 volt battery banks charged
the other thing that goes to our inverter is our generator
we have a four kilowatt generator
and this generator we don't really use it that often we use it when we have a high power consumption
let's say we're running the air conditioners both day and night
and or we're making water normally those are the two things that use the most energy
but most of the time we're just always running off the solar panels
it's still good to have it because let's say for instance
if we have six cloudy days on a row and we want to make water
and you know the batteries are are pretty low we don't want to lower our batteries more than ten percent
and so that's when we would turn on the generator
now we are going to go to our lithium batteries
uh that's our 48 volt bank
and alejo is going to explain that to you guys so let's go
so we are here in the port stern room
where our lithium is installed
so we have a 48 volt bank that's separate from like the original 12V bank from the boat
our bank is 4
four 170 amp power 24 volt batteries
they are from big battery and so we connected them in parallel then in series
to create two 48 volt banks
so this is 148 volt bank and this is another one
and this goes to our inverter
in total we have um 340 amp hours of 48 volts
that's equivalent to
1 300 and
1 360.
okay that is equivalent to 1 360 amp hours in 12 volts
so yeah that's a big battery bank
um maybe in the future we'll add a little bit more
we'll see
if you guys have been following us for the last couple videos
so we changed the batteries
around six to eight months we had a lg chem battery
and that battery went bad
one of the cells inside the pack got like unbalanced
and the whole pack like stopped working
10-year warranty big company that they would help you and they don't do anything for you
so here we are with uh
how much is this battery worth like ten thousand dollars
and we couldn't do like warranty or anything so yeah
so we decided to go with big battery
our experience with big battery has been very good
well they have worked perfectly
the good thing is this is uh LifePo4 like cells
so it's like lithium iron phosphate is not like the lg chem which was nmc
which is more unstable it can catch on fire
these cells don't catch on fire
make sure to subscribe if you like this video
if you are looking into like switching into lithiums or if you're gonna get a boat and you wanna know more about lithiums
i'm gonna be doing another video in the couple next weeks about comparing other brands of lithium
and also i'll be installing a brand new bms on these batteries
so i'm gonna be taking them apart and seeing what's inside how
they're working
and just to make sure that everything is all right so we can see the quality of big battery after eight months of usage
and i'm gonna be installing a bms made by emus
i'm gonna be switching the bms on the batteries because our inverter requires a can bus communication cable between batteries and inverter
just to like um have a more accurate state of charge
and that way the solar can just like put a lot of power without having like too many restrictions
so guys now we're gonna talk about our power consumption in the entire boat and we're gonna
start with what consumes the most energy which is our water maker
and so since we are an off-grid boat we spend a lot of time in remote places
we don't have to actually go to marinas to get water or we don't have to you know um
we are a self-sufficient boat pretty much so in terms of both water and electricity we do pretty good
and so our water maker it actually consumes 2530 watts
now that obviously is the maximum that does depend on how much water and how much pressure we're making
i won't be going too in-depth on our water maker because this video is focused only on
our electric system
we will be making another video on the water systems
but for now all you need to know is how much it consumes
let's go to the other appliances
so let's talk about the kitchen area
now we have our stove which is a two burner stove one of the burners is actually a double burner
which means like it can be small or it can be a big burner
and the maximum that the stove consumes is actually 1800 watts
again that is the maximum and that does depend on the temperature we're using
we also have our oven here and our oven actually consumes 1650 watts
again just like with everything else that depends on the temperature because normally if you put a low temperature
it will actually just turn on and turn back off
just to make sure that it keeps that low temperature but it's not constantly consuming
those 1600 watts
we also have our dishwasher and our dishwasher actually consumes 650 watts
that is assuming that we use eco mode
here we have our refrigerator and our refrigerator actually uses 90 watts
and it's the same thing as the as the oven it actually turns on and off
it's normally it's very easy to keep cool
and the same thing goes for the freezer
we have two freezers on the boat and this is our main freezer
this one actually consumes 150 watts um and we have a second freezer in one of our bathrooms
which is like a storage room
i'll show you guys
so the second freezer which is the one that we have here um
we like to have a second freezer for storage and this one actually uses about 45 watts
again same thing turns on and off so it's not really like a high consuming appliance
so below our sofa we have our first air conditioning unit which is a 16 000 btu air conditioning unit
and that one actually consumes 1050 watts
and that is when you have it full on using the 16 000 btus
now it also has an eco mode and when you put it on eco mode it only consumes 200 watts
and it goes down to like 3900 btus
and the good thing about this air conditioning units is that they have a soft start
so they don't like pull that huge electrical consumption when you turn them on
which is what most of the air conditioning units do
right here we have our second air conditioning unit and this is the unit that we use for our room
we never really turn on all three air conditioning units at the same time
usually we turn on this one when we're gonna go to sleep and we run it for the entire night we run it in eco mode
and this is a 10 000 btu air conditioning unit and this one actually consumes only 680 watts
and that is when you're using it to the maximum
we also have the same unit in the opposite room of the boat which is the port bow room
and that one has the same air conditioning unit if we run all three air conditioning units at the same time
let's think about like worse situation um we were able to keep the entire boat super cool
but what we normally do is that we just lock the rooms
we lock the cabins like we close the doors on all the cabins
and run the salon which is where we spend most of the time when we're working and that's what we have done during summer
we especially turn on the air conditioning units mostly for the dogs because they get really hot
obviously they're very hairy
and so when we turn on the ac it just cools the boat right away and we have a super
comfortable office for us and a home for the dogs so
and one quick tip for you guys that if you're interested in getting air conditioning units for your boat uh
before we move on to the washer is that um
the air conditioning units obviously you need a pump for the air conditioners which is going to be running the entire time you run the acs
and normally people buy brands like dometic but the bad thing about those water pumps is that they consume about 800 watts
so even if you're running your ac units which have super low um power consumption
you're still using a lot of energy on the pump so
we have a iwaki water pump it actually this is a small one
the one we have installed for the air conditioning units is a little bit bigger
but this small one consumes from 45 to 50 to 57 watts
the one that is a little bit bigger and might range from 100 to let's say 120 watts so it's still significantly less than if you're using one of those uh big brands
that is consuming 800 watts and you know you might as well not install air conditioning units that are going to have a low power consumption
our washer also consumes about 500 watts
and obviously we do connect a lot of things
like we connect the electric scooters when we have to charge them
we're always working on our computers as you guys know we run a business an online business
we're always like plugging in computers or cell phones like the blender the rice cooker
so there's a bunch of other things that i'm not taking into account we're only mentioning the appliances that have a high power consumption
and i hope this helps give you a better idea about how much we actually consume in terms of our entire boat
so if we wanted to put together the perfect electric system for a boat what would you put babe
i would go with the lg neon r solar panels or panasonic like the ones we have
but i will get instead of panels that are 295 watts
i would get like the ones that are like 340 or something
i think we're pretty happy in terms of the lithium batteries as we mentioned to you guys uh
one of the companies that we would not recommend is a company from our generator whisper power
we had a terrible experience with them in terms of the customer service
lg chem with the customer service we were not that happy with them either
but uh we were very happy with our inverter
the SMA inverter is really good one of the things that you have to look out for
is the warranty with the companies that you guys are going with
because believe me they will
something might happen to them at some point and you really want to have that customer service
someone to be able to talk to someone to guide you through the process on how to fix it you know when you're far away
or like not having anyone to help you out it's really good to be able to have someone on that you can just give a call on the line
and sma for us they did an incredible job they were uh it was super easy to get in touch with them
super easy to get great customer service
also when you're purchasing like electronics for your boat make sure that the warranty does cover if they are installed in boats
because that's what happened with us for the lg battery
i guess the previous owner didn't tell lg that they were gonna put it on a boat
and that's one of the things that we checked with big battery uh
they do cover us they do give us warranty if something happens to the batteries and if something goes wrong uh
they know that they are installed in a boat and they are going to cover them at any point in time if something were to happen
so i think that's about it for this video
we really hope you guys enjoyed it and we hope that you were able to find some valuable information from everything that we shared with you today
don't forget to
subscribe
hit that thumbs up
yep and make sure to uh click on the little bell click all notifications so that you receive notifications whenever we upload a new video
as we mentioned we will be uploading some um videos in the near future
one where alejo is comparing the uh low cost batteries that we have right now which are the big battery ones compared to big brands uh such as
reliant and battle boarn
and in
other videos we will be doing the installation of the battery management system on our batteries so
make sure to subscribe and hit the bell and we will see you guys on the next video bye