Electrical prep

Getting there

As of this weekend there were a few minor items (reconnecting the tiller autopilot, reconnecting the car charger, wiring up the fuel cell so it can charge both batteries and not just one, labeling some of the connections and switches to make operations easier) and testing. Right now, I could get the main battery to charge but the second battery bank gave me trouble.

The awesome news (great idea for the fuel cell Tim @ KKMI) is that at any time, I will be able to connect a given source of power to any battery / battery bank regardless of which battery I have selected to power up the boat instruments. 

Most likely scenario is that I will have one battery discharged and one battery charged up, I may decide to steer by hand for a little while, run on the battery that's full and charge up the other ones, so that when I decide to set back the autopilot (the main source of power requirement on the boat) I can have to charged up batteries for the night, giving me quite a ways to go before I have to use the fuel cell.

Most likely I will use the fuel cell in automatic mode (it has its own charge controller and sensors) so that I don't have to worry about when to switch from solar to fuel at the end of the day but I may stop it in the morning by turning it off manually until the batteries are charged up again by solar power) 

 

 

Organizing spare electrical parts (and soon nuts, bolts and fasteners) in a waterproof box for the trip

Fuel cell and its cartridge full of methanol. Very easy to install. Love this thing. So easy to use.

Using hard to get to dead space but you really don't need to change that cartridge very often...so best place for it for sure.

In addition to the 105Ah, Elise now has 2 55Ah set as a bank. They will always be used as such, so charge levels will always be comparable, easy to set up and remove.

 

Charging switch determines who gets the charge current between battery 1 and battery 2.

The regular battery switch (the big '1', '2', 'BOTH' and 'OFF') determines which battery gets to discharge its energy.

Both switches work independently. So you can be charged and be the power, or discharge and not be charged, or be charged and not discharged...

Cleaned up the antenna set up for the NKE remote control. I love this thing. You take it with you at the bow or below deck and you can make easy adjustment without getting anywhere near the control panel.