Tom and Bex

As to price of solar, couldn't agree more. Our last boat had 1kw solar, the first 2 panels I bought were around £200ea for 250w, the second set were around £100ea. I'm still not convinced more solar makes much difference in winter. We found virtually no discernable difference between our initial 500w and the upgrade to 1kw in winter. It did make a difference on cloudy summer days, and proved more reliable at meeting our needs early spring and late autumn. Still experienced very sudden drop off beginning November until mid February though, with virtually no useable output from our 500w or 1kw array.

I'm the first to admit lithiums are not for everyone, but it seems like you're keeping your options open and doing the right thing by researching and asking questions. There was very little experience with lithiums on here when I designed and installed mine, but there's several of us now with practical hands on experience and I don't think any of us would consider going back. It's not so much the BMS that is the issue, as how you control your charge sources, particularly the alternator. I've used a dedicated Arduino based alternator regulator for day to day control, and (as a failsafe backup), a relay controlled by the BMS to cut all charge sources if a single cell voltage goes too high. Dr Bob (and I think MP) keep a lead acid bank in parallel and isolate the lithiums when they consider them charged enough. This can simplify things, and the lead acid acts as dump load for the alternator. You need to remember LA's start to sulphate and lose capacity very quickly if left in partial state of charge, and really need some daily charging, and at least weekly charging to 100%. Regardless of bank size, if off grid, you'll be running your engine/generator for many more hours a week than I will in winter. We're in the fortunate position to have experience of both your ideas to a greater or lesser degree. Our last boat had 1kw of solar, and 450ah T105's. Currently we've got 500w solar with 320ah 2nd hand lithiums. I certainly know what option I prefer and it's the one I don't really have to think about and never seems to leave us short of power ? I don't think 4 panels is necessarily a ludicrous amount. Our 1kw on our last boat was 4 panels, and I'm sure we paid more for them than you will for 1.5kw! Don't underestimate the difficulty of walking along a 30cm wide strip high on the roof with nothing to hold onto though. Not as easy as it might seem. Personally I wouldn't bother with hinging them though. The ones on our last boat were designed to be angled slightly, but in reality we never did so our current ones are fixed flat. Not convinced it really makes a lot of difference unless you accurately track the sun, and only then in winter when you get virtually no solar anyway. Everyone develops their own locking technique as their experience grows. We virtually never use lock landings though, preferring to position our boat in the lock mouth. Going up I'll usually jump on the roof to climb onto lock side and help my wife with the lock, before she goes on to set the next leaving me to finish closing up behind me. Going down much the same, she'll go and set the next lock and I'll use the roof to jump down at the front after opening gates and walk along the roof to the back. Also with a full length boat, the ladder never seems to be near front or back deck. I disagree with some of the other comments though, it's nearly always possible to shuffle along the gunwale to reach the ladder as long as you don't mind getting covered in slime from the lock walls! We've used this technique locking in heavy snow, I'd never consider using the roof when it's covered in 12ins snow! As said, everyone's different, although the inefficiencies I see with some boaters locking technique, it's a wonder they make any progress at all! There's been a few times I've single handed up a flight with all locks set against me, setting the locks behind for a following boat and still got to the top a long time ahead of them, only to then realise they had a fairly fit and active crew of 4 or more!

That's the ones, only mine came from Ebay (probably China!). Relay seems expensive from there! Not sure what they usually cost new though, mine was 2nd hand.

That was also from Ebay, but can't remember exact details (think it came from China).

Which is why the bms I linked to would make it so much easier! I'm using a standalone circuit to convert a simple switched supply to a pulse on pulse off output, but it's added complication, expense, and more potential points of failure. I still consider the power saving worth the effort though.

Bi-stable relays can be surprisingly hard to control if your control source only puts out a simple on/off signal! BEP switch on the other hand only needs one control wire. Another example of good planning/design being needed to ensure simplicity and all components working together.

Which is another big advantage of the bms I linked to earlier - direct support for bi-stable relay switching. Just to clarify for anyone reading who is unsure of the advantages, the current draw from a high power relay coil can easily be 0.5A or more. Use 3 (load bus, charge bus, and emergency disconnect), then you can easily be using up to 36AH daily just powering your bms relays! Compare that to zero power usage for bi-stable relays and you can see the advantages!

I think I paid about £35 on Ebay for the one I used on our setup. Seem to be available cheaper if you search for "Ford battery switch" instead of bi-stable relay or by part numbers.

Three terminals for the coils, on, off, and common ground terminal. The 'wings' you see in the picture are the power terminals for bolting the connections to.

I don't see what difference it would make really other than possible extend the "solar season" by a few weeks. Not even sure it would be by much though as we find there is a point where solar just drops off the edge of a cliff. Our current solar is more than enough with lithiums, which would indicate it's the lead acid technology that is throttling output rather than solar as such. At the end of the day it's up to individuals to make their own judgement on what system is best for them and their needs, and I'd never advise anyone to blindly install lithiums without reading up and understanding them first. It's very very difficult to forget everything you know and understand about lead acid batteries, how they work, and how to look after them, and learn a completely new way of charging and using batteries. Once installed though, they really are fit and forget. If prepared to do some research, design your own system using advice on here and elsewhere, and source the components and batteries (used or new) then they have finally become an affordable alternative, and actually compare favourably on price with a decent lead acid setup.

It would certainly be high on my list for a future install, along with a cheap bi-stable relay or 2 like this one.

We often charge to 95% and sometimes to 100%. Only time will tell how damaging this is, but from what I've read, it's the holding batteries at 100% that I'd the problem, not charging them to that and using them straight away. And of course the balancing issue, but if carefully top balanced they should stay that way (or use a cell balancing system - either stand alone or built into bms. When the solar really starts to drop off, I might do a full discharge test to see if there is any change to capacity from last year.(Our 100% is based on charging at 14.0v until tail current drops to 5% of bank capacity as programmed in our alternator controller). Finally this bms caught my attention in an email the other day. Looks simple to install, and reasonably priced for the functions it offers. Can also control bi-stable relays or conventional replays directly with no additional circuitry which is what brought my eye to it. Seems to have all the controls you'd need (except cell balancing if you want that).

We've had our lithiums installed for just over a year now and best investment we've made. We've been living off grid on our last boat with 1kw solar and 4x t105 batteries for 2.5 years, and this boat with 500w solar and 5x cheapo sealed batteries for 18 months, and now 1 year with our lithiums and 500w solar. With 1kw solar and the t105s we were just about coping from April to September with solar, but still having to top up charge quite often, and running generator if using washing machine etc. With the cheapo batteries and 500w solar we'd decided it wasn't enough as weren't coping except on long sunny days. Batteries were also completely knackered after less than a year, but managed to struggle on for a second summer. The lithiums have been a complete transformation for us living off grid. 500w solar is coping very well, and even allows us run washing machine from solar. As others have said, these batteries just soak up what ever charge is available from solar. I believe charge efficiencies of 99-100% are common with lithiums (our bmv is set to 99% and seems to track charge well). Yes they are more expensive, but the extra more than pays for itself in reduced recharge times. As mentioned above, they are available 2nd hand from various sources. When no longer suitable for ev use they are still fine for our light duty use (I got mine as they dropped voltage slightly too much under very heavy load, 200A+ on 160AH cells). They also have very stable voltage profile, ours are nearly always between 13.3-13.8v regardless of load or charge rate. As to installation and BMS, yes it needs some planning, but not too hard to do, and new products coming out all the time. There's some very slight changes I'd consider if doing it again, but would not consider having a boat without them now. Also never even bother looking at the monitor for days at a time in the summer, they just sit there and work as they should with no monitoring or fussing!

Even single handed you'll be miles quicker on all those locks than canalplan's default settings. In fact I think it would be difficult to work slowly enough to get even close to the default on those locks.

Another option to consider if you haven't done it before is the Titford canal for a trip round the pools. Could come back via Brades (the only staircase on the BCN). Should be doable in the time you have. Locks on the Titford are some of the fastest I've worked and very easy single handed.

I would strongly advise not to go for the cheap Impax generator from screwfix. We took ours back 3 times under the 1 year guarantee - the 3rd time we got a refund and put the money towards a Kipor instead that so far has proved much more reliable. The cheap Impax generator would start tripping into overload with less and less power being used, getting worse and worse until it would not power anything. I suspect it was the very cheap Chinese electronics failing, the actual engine continuing to start and run very well. As to powering your 30a charger from a 700w generator, while in theory it should work, it may well not in practice. We find our that while our 1kw generator will just about run our Sterling pro charge ultra 40a charger, it will trip our generator if starting charger at full power. The only way around this is to start it at 75% and switch to 100% whilst charger is running. Unfortunately this is not an easy thing to do on the Sterling, involving holding buttons down and multiple button presses in conjunction with the manual! Having said all that, none of it is really relevant to us now, and we only charge our lithium batteries with main engine or solar. We find this much more convenient than messing with generator and petrol, but does depend on what engine you have.

That's definitely our experience, although charging at a much higher voltage (15v) does seem to mitigate that to some degree. We only got just over a year out of our last set, hence the decision to go lithium. There is plenty of real life experience of these batteries in sea going boats in the states, and experience points to life expectancy of 10yrs plus and 5000+ cycles in low charge and discharge usage. I agree they're not for everyone though and over charge or discharge will kill them quicker than lead acid! Not sure on make - just an old 10a car charger with transformer and no fancy controls! Voltage keeps rising slowly as current falls so ideal for equalization etc.

We found our knackered sealed batteries regained some capacity and we got another winter out of them by charging to 16.5v using an old style car charger, and upping our regular charging voltage to 15v (+temp compensation). You could hear the batteries bubbling at 16.5v (unsurprisingly!) but not when charged at 15v. I strongly believe that for our usage, the added calcium in modern batteries, makes sealed batteries have a very short life if using recommended charging voltages. They certainly appear to work better charged at much higher voltages, and when I removed the cover on one before scraping it I found the level to be absolutely fine.

Huge thanks to Richard and Sue for taking on the organising and for getting the results out so fast. I know it was hard for them not to be taking part this year Very pleased with our 3rd place considering the only planning I did was Thursday night! I was thinking 6th would have been a good result. Highlights of the challenge for us were the many positive comments we recieved on the Walsall Canal with several locals thinking we were lost as they never see any boats! We felt the Walsall canal was better this year than previously, yes it is shallow and lots of rubbish, but generally felt the rubbish was less than previous years. Nice to meet other participants again and Lily particularly liked playing with Bob at the pub until she finally ran out of energy!

We have some if you still need when we get there. Should be at the finish in about 10 to 15 minutes.

Just back from Ma Pardoes and takeaway? Guess it's time to get some sleep before the big day? Good luck to all the participants and hope to see you around over the weekend.

All out now, fire brigade just clearing up.

Having overnighted in Birmingham centre, we're off to hawne basin to fill up with diesel and gas before heading to our start location. If you pass us having run out of diesel before hawne basin please take pity on us and don't laugh too much!

Thanks for the info and pics. Great to see Firepool lock getting some use! Pass on my best wishes to them. Looks like it's worth a visit when next in Somerset. Have many happy memories of boating on the B&T in various forms of boat, and have done the full length many times. Grew up in Creech St. Michael and helped crew the various IWA boats before full opening, and again at Maunsel lock for a while.

Shouldn't those responsibilities have been clearly defined at the point of transfer? Do CRT have right of free use of the water, or do they pay for the water they take from there? If free then surely there is no incentive on Staffordshire council to repair the valve!