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Re: Converting my Amel 54 to lithium batteries: what I did, what I like and what I don't like (after one year of full time live aboard use)

Paul Brown
 

I agree with Scott entirely, from my experience now with five larger boats in the past 20 years and many issues with particularly batteries and chargers, when things go wrong it becomes a blame game and a continuous expense.

This Mastervolt 720ah lithium, charging and BMS system on my boat current boat has not missed a beat in the past 5 years and on the occasion when I have lacked knowledge to correct an issue and asked for MV technical assistance they have simply logged in remotely from their head office and checked and reprogrammed or updated firmware with ease via an internet connection and a phone conversation.

From this experience I recommend a system from one manufacturer, it may cost a little more but the service and warranty is solid 

I also experience the requirement for around 1000w/32A solar to manage off the grid for anchoring and sailing passages, the generator would only be required for a rare situation with all appliances running off inverters 

Thanks Scott again for you sharing 

Regards Paul - Fortuna II A55/#17


On 6 Sep 2019, at 5:46 pm, Scott SV Tengah <Scott.nguyen@...> wrote:

Dan,

Answers to your questions:

1) As I mentioned, I didn't want to mess around with different manufacturers in case the expensive batteries died. I learned this from when I was working - to the extent possible, make sure you have one responsible party when there are many interconnected systems/processes. If you buy a Winston battery, which I considered, and it dies, they will certainly blame the Victron charger. Victron will claim their charger is perfect. You are now the one paying for a new one out of pocket. By going Victron on battery and charger and getting Victron to help me set it up, I am more likely to have the warranty honored.

Lithium requires enough thinking, I didn't want to try to invent more things than I needed to.

2) I have redundancy with my Skylla-i, as I described. I also envisioned using it to charge the bank and then running off inverter when in 110/220 60hz countries. See original text. It's not rocket science, so I would just re-wire if there's a failure. I also have the old 800w Mastervolt inverter as a backup.

3) See original text. I talk about my thoughts on this.

FYI we use close to 5kw a day, maybe a bit more. Solar provides most of it. I surmise if we didn't cook with induction/electric kettle/microwave and used the gas stove instead, we'd use a lot less. But induction is far superior, in my opinion. We keep the gas as a backup, however. Too many things need to go right for induction to work to rely on it exclusively.

--
Scott 
2007 A54 #69
SV Tengah
http://www.svtengah.com

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