All Electric?

[dmr]

10 minutes ago, PeterF said:

 

I agree on the P type is probably better if a field wire short occurs but I spotted this after I had purchased the N type Harness and understand that I could do the alternator whatever flavour I wanted. I have double insulated the field wires and should bring them out of the back through the plastic cover rather than metal case.

 

Wakespeed programming has improved a lot with the Android app but you still need a USB cable connection so no I-Phone app as they do not have that facility. This was always the bug bear with them. The Zeus may give them the impetus to sort out their Bluetooth.

 

 

 

I would not worry about the N type. Our alternator runs very hot and I had not given enough thought to the routing of the wire.

The lack of Apple support is a potential big negative for me, though it is possible to get an adaptor to connect USB to the iPhone but maybe the software side is difficult.

I think I will delay the Wakespeed purchase for a bit and see how the Zeus developes, plenty of other things to do first including a victron BtoB to replace my little battery sharing relay.

[Tony1]

4 hours ago, wakey_wake said:

 

Did I infer correctly that you have old-style regulators?

What I'm hearing is that the regulation is still pretty strong, so I was wrong about needing to pull the voltage down to get the power. However, smart regulation will still be better.

 

 

Apologies if I've misunderstood, I am almost completely ignorant about electronics- if you are asking whether my alternators still have their original regulators, that's a yes. The engine is a canaline 38, of 2015 vintage.

I have no clue about the mechanism, but as soon as the lithiums were connected, the alternators started working flat out, giving almost their maximum rated current, and overheated very quickly.

It was very disappointing to learn that my 100 amp domestic alternator was not actually capable of producing more than 40 amps (at tickover) on a continuous basis, without overheating. In fairness it may be a bit more than that, because I'm not counting the current that gets absorbed by the lead acid battery- but that's not too great. 

I would have loved to get a big alternator with a clever external regulator fitted, plus one of those sterling units that protects the alternator by soaking up the excess charge when/if the lithium batteries are suddenly physically disconnected from the charging by the BMS.  

With that kind of setup, there is no need for parallel LA batteries and B2Bs, but for various reasons I didnt get that solution. 

Re battery life: The second hand lead acid battery that was connected to the domestic alternator 2 years ago is now starting to show signs of deterioration, which will probably be down to its role as a 'feeder' battery for the lithiums, and its charging regime is pretty poor. 

But for me, buying one new LA battery every few years is a price worth paying. 

 

 

[magnetman]

I wonder if there might be an argument for a water cooling system of some sort. I know that some French and German cars (Renault and BMW being examples) have water cooled alternators but I was thinking of something retrofitted. Copper pipe wrapped around the alternator body perhaps or a water/air heat exchanger routing cold air to the alternator fan. 

 

If one could have a dedicated ducted air supply to the alternator it might help keep it cooler. 

 

[IanD]

5 minutes ago, magnetman said:

I wonder if there might be an argument for a water cooling system of some sort. I know that some French and German cars (Renault and BMW being examples) have water cooled alternators but I was thinking of something retrofitted. Copper pipe wrapped around the alternator body perhaps or a water/air heat exchanger routing cold air to the alternator fan. 

 

If one could have a dedicated ducted air supply to the alternator it might help keep it cooler. 

 

 

A ducted cold air supply to the alternator (from outside the boat?) will certainly help, various people have done this in the past with good results. No alternators like providing anywhere near the full rated current at engine idle speed, the cooling fan won't blow enough air through them. Cooling the outside of the case might help a bit, but it depends how good the thermal contact is between the stator windings and the case. Lithium batteries are death to alternators...

 

https://marinehowto.com/marine-alternator-installation-tips-tricks/

[magnetman]

It is slightly ironic that a thread called 'all electric' is discussing rotating electrics driven by an infernal combustion engine. 

 

But yes of course alternators are not generally designed to be running at slow speeds. 

 

I never used the main engine while moored on any of my boats as it seems the wrong plan. 

 

 

[wakey_wake]

Thanks all, for the handy info!

 

Recently I've found that searches for alternator information have mostly produced what seem to be template driven / AI written drivel "information site" pages, and some uninformative Youtube vids. Hopefully that's a temporary problem rather than the direction the 'net is going.

 

 

4 hours ago, PeterF said:

There is a new kid on the block, the Zeus alternator regulator [...]

More complex than the Wakespeed, with Bluetooth, both battery and alternator current shunts, lots more control inputs. [...]

Inspired name!

 

But why does every box, blue or otherwise, have to carry a Bluetooth transceiver?

I don't want passers by fiddling with it, or seeing what expensive kit I'm carrying.

I don't want it increasing my vampire load. I don't want their proprietary protocols hidden behind a hard-to-sniff transport that I can't just tap; and consequently can't interface my own stuff to.

 

ETA: I'm not saying all the Bluetooth-enabled boxes will allow unauthorised connections. Maybe none do?

Zeus says "Bluetooth: Yes (Password Protected)" so that means the passing thief may discover you have a Zeus, but not the size of battery.

 

 

1 hour ago, IanD said:

A ducted cold air supply to the alternator (from outside the boat?) will certainly help, various people have done this in the past with good results. No alternators like providing anywhere near the full rated current at engine idle speed, the cooling fan won't blow enough air through them. Cooling the outside of the case might help a bit, but it depends how good the thermal contact is between the stator windings and the case.

It's the copper that's making the heat, and its insulation's temperature which has to not be exceeded.

It's another places where I²C is telling us to back off the I just a bit. Knowing the RPM and input air temperature for a model of alternator ought to be enough to know what output it can sustain? That has some benefit to the lag of monitoring case temperature, but it's harder to do.

 

It is again pointing to higher voltages.

Edited November 12, 2023 by wakey_wake
Bluetooth security

[ditchcrawler]

Not seen this mentioned here 

Webinar Registration - Zoom 

[Up-Side-Down]

4 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

Not seen this mentioned here 

Webinar Registration - Zoom 

I thought this worth a 'watch' if only to get an insurance company's take on lithium (and associated kit) and to get a feel on how they are going to relate to what is effectively a systems revolution (from an insurance perspective, anyway!).

[MtB]

13 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

Not seen this mentioned here 

 

It was mentioned here on the forum a few days ago.

 

I decided against watching it as it will probably be highly 'insurance company oriented', quite likely aimed at the lowest common denominator and I'm dead busy at the moment anyway.

 

Besides, I thought others will watch it and report back the essence of what they say here anyway! 

 

Thanks for posting though, forgot to say.

 

 

Edited November 12, 2023 by MtB

[magnetman]

48v alternator and 48v rack mount LFP batteries seems a clever approach. 

 

48v inverter. 

 

Droppers or a separate battery for the 12v circuit. 

 

Some of these rack mounted batteries look really nice. 

 

 

https://www.ecopowerdirect.co.uk/batteries/eve-48100t-lithium-battery-clearance/

[MtB]

3 minutes ago, magnetman said:

48v alternator and 48v rack mount LFP batteries seems a clever approach. 

 

48v inverter. 

 

Droppers or a separate battery for the 12v circuit. 

 

Some of these rack mounted batteries look really nice. 

 

 

 

 

I bet 48v alternators cost an absolute mint compared to an A127 clone.

 

At 48v we only need one quarter of the current.

 

Or the same current for four times the power and speed of recharging. Along with the need for drive belts able to deliver four times the torque and engines that can deliver that torque without the crankshaft pulleys rattling themselves loose. 

[magnetman]

I should have added propshaft driven. 

 

 

But then of course people want to charge when not going along. 

 

This all seems to come down to the fundamental unsatisfactory nature of running big diesel engines to charge batteries while not moving the boat. 

 

Noise, engine wear and overheating alternators. Not ideal ! 

 

 

 

 

[IanD]

22 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

 

I bet 48v alternators cost an absolute mint compared to an A127 clone.

 

At 48v we only need one quarter of the current.

 

Or the same current for four times the power and speed of recharging. Along with the need for drive belts able to deliver four times the torque and engines that can deliver that torque without the crankshaft pulleys rattling themselves loose. 

Or on some engines -- for example, Beta -- you can fit 2 standard 24V alternators each with its own drive belt amd connect them in series.

[MtB]

11 minutes ago, IanD said:

Or on some engines -- for example, Beta -- you can fit 2 standard 24V alternators each with its own drive belt amd connect them in series.

 

That seems like a Good Idea. 24v alternators can be had for about £300 each IIRC.

 

Or that's what my Leece-Neville cost a few years ago! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[dmr]

2 hours ago, wakey_wake said:

Thanks all, for the handy info!

 

Recently I've found that searches for alternator information have mostly produced what seem to be template driven / AI written drivel "information site" pages, and some uninformative Youtube vids. Hopefully that's a temporary problem rather than the direction the 'net is going.

 

 

Inspired name!

 

But why does every box, blue or otherwise, have to carry a Bluetooth transceiver?

I don't want passers by fiddling with it, or seeing what expensive kit I'm carrying.

I don't want it increasing my vampire load. I don't want their proprietary protocols hidden behind a hard-to-sniff transport that I can't just tap; and consequently can't interface my own stuff to.

 

ETA: I'm not saying all the Bluetooth-enabled boxes will allow unauthorised connections. Maybe none do?

Zeus says "Bluetooth: Yes (Password Protected)" so that means the passing thief may discover you have a Zeus, but not the size of battery.

 

 

It's the copper that's making the heat, and its insulation's temperature which has to not be exceeded.

It's another places where I²C is telling us to back off the I just a bit. Knowing the RPM and input air temperature for a model of alternator ought to be enough to know what output it can sustain? That has some benefit to the lag of monitoring case temperature, but it's harder to do.

 

It is again pointing to higher voltages.

Thats silly, its the case temperature that matters (or strictly the windings and diodes) so its much better to measure alternator temperature directly rather than to measure other things and try to predict what you want to know. Alternator air slots will clog up over time so compromise your prediction.

 

I too have mixed feelings about Bluetooth but its very convenient. Its a weak signal so not much chance of getting at it from outside the boat, and is anybody really interested?

 

I do find that looking at settings and making adjustments on a mobile phone with a good screen is very convenient. The alternatives are loads of DIP switches or lots of complicated sequential presses of a button with maybe a tiny LCD alpha-numeric display....yuk.

A nice touch screen computer built into the boat would be nice, a bit expensive at the moment but Victron are rapidly heading that way,.

1 hour ago, magnetman said:

48v alternator and 48v rack mount LFP batteries seems a clever approach. 

 

48v inverter. 

 

Droppers or a separate battery for the 12v circuit. 

 

Some of these rack mounted batteries look really nice. 

 

 

https://www.ecopowerdirect.co.uk/batteries/eve-48100t-lithium-battery-clearance/

 

Yeah, ive looked at that, but 48v is just too difficult and expensive so 24 is probably a good compromise (for non traction systems). A big 12 volt dropper (or two in parallel for redundancy) looks quite feasable and not too expensive.

[MtB]

10 minutes ago, dmr said:

I too have mixed feelings about Bluetooth but its very convenient. Its a weak signal so not much chance of getting at it from outside the boat, and is anybody really interested?

 

 

I was thinking that too. One is even using it inside a steel box which would probably severely limit the signal strength on the towpath outside.

 

 

[ditchcrawler]

59 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

That seems like a Good Idea. 24v alternators can be had for about £300 each IIRC.

 

Or that's what my Leece-Neville cost a few years ago! 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Less than that for cheap insulated return ones

[MtB]

Some bar stewards raided my workshops here and took everything saleable but not everything valuable. This amounted to everything made of brass and copper, I later figured out. 

 

Annoyingly some of the items lost weighed half a kg and cost £280 each, whilst others weighed the same and cost a tenner. But they weren't to know that. I doubt any loser thieves on thw towpath would regard a Zeus as worth nicking, unless it contains half a kilo of copper.

[dmr]

3 minutes ago, MtB said:

 

I was thinking that too. One is even using it inside a steel box which would probably severely limit the signal strength on the towpath outside.

 

 

The signal from my Victron stuff barely gets out of the engine room. I could check outside the boat tomorrow but the weather is not looking good.

I think there is a password option but I have not done it.

I can just imagine a couple of lads boasting down the pub (or in a car sniffing nitrous oxide these days 😀), guess wot I did today, I walked past a boat and set his float voltage right up to 15.5, that'll piss him off.

[magnetman]

My Victron MPPT controllers are easily visible from outside the boat. Its a steel boat and they are not near windows. 

 

The app allows one to change the name but it still shows up as the model number so yes anyone with a Victron app can stand beside the boat and see what is on board. 

 

2 minutes ago, dmr said:

The signal from my Victron stuff barely gets out of the engine room. I could check outside the boat tomorrow but the weather is not looking good.

I think there is a password option but I have not done it.

I can just imagine a couple of lads boasting down the pub (or in a car sniffing nitrous oxide these days 😀), guess wot I did today, I walked past a boat and set his float voltage right up to 15.5, that'll piss him off.

 

There is a default pass code on Victron gear which you can easily change. 

 

 

[MtB]

Coincidentally I think I heard on the wireless this morning, sale of nitrous oxide bottles was to be regulated/banned in the King's speech or summink like that. 

[magnetman]

Already banned.

 

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/nitrous-oxide-ban

 

08/11/23

Edited November 12, 2023 by magnetman

[dmr]

2 minutes ago, magnetman said:

My Victron MPPT controllers are easily visible from outside the boat. Its a steel boat and they are not near windows. 

 

 

I guess this is why Sterling don't do Bluetooth, a passerby could find out what you've got and you would loose all credibility 😀

2 minutes ago, MtB said:

Coincidentally I think I heard on the wireless this morning, sale of nitrous oxide bottles was to be regulated/banned in the King's speech or summink like that. 

 

There will cars full of lads putting fizzy cream onto their cakes (and spilling a bit of N2O as they go)..

[wakey_wake]

10 hours ago, magnetman said:

My Victron MPPT controllers are easily visible from outside the boat. Its a steel boat and they are not near windows. 

 

The app allows one to change the name but it still shows up as the model number so yes anyone with a Victron app can stand beside the boat and see what is on board. 

 

There is a default pass code on Victron gear which you can easily change.

 

Thanks. I did expect the signal to get out.

 

One doesn't need the Victron app to identify the hardware, there are software scanners for ordinary mobiles which will list the nearby devices and tell you what kind of thing they are. This aspect of the signal has to be visible before you authenticate with the pass code.

 

When you've locked it by changing the pass code, it's entirely possible (and frequently done by software people of all persuasions) for the mechanism of this to be quite weak. Either accidentally, or sometimes it is accused that the three letter agencies wanted a convenient back door and were persuasive.

Victron's reputation suggests they would have solid security engineering too, but I doubt we can see the source code.

 

 

10 hours ago, MtB said:

Some bar stewards raided my workshops here and took everything saleable but not everything valuable. [...]

I doubt any loser thieves on thw towpath would regard a Zeus as worth nicking, unless it contains half a kilo of copper.

 

When I had a mouse in my car, he liked the smell of peanut butter and the bar came down on his head before he got to taste it. Unfortunately for me, after he has done some damage to wiring... unless that was a coincidental failure?

(I did try live capture with a bucket, and a stern admonishment that this was his last chance to go back home, but not effective.)

 

I understand why we're not allowed to have bigger versions with a nice lump of shiny brass on the trigger plate but there should be some other effective way to protect things.

 

There are many species of criminal. Some are bright enough to buy a scanner app for their phone... hope they get nicked for going equipped!

 

A Zeus itself may be not worth the trouble of breaking in, but it indicates the presence of other kit and (as I complained ⏫) a lot of the boxes will enumerate themselves because each has a BT interface.

 

Defence has to have multiple layers. If you choose to own some cheese, good defences are to keep the cheese in a stout metal box and prevent the smell of cheese wafting out to sensitive noses. The next one I can think of is to attach everything together in a big lump so it can't be easily removed without destroying its value.

[magnetman]

Rodents can read. 

 

I had a rat on the boat once so I put out a note 'if you come here again I will kill you very badly'. It never returned. 

 

 

Maybe a 'Venomous Reptiles' sticker on the side of the boat could work. 

 

 

I have these 

 

 

 

 

I don't think it works for illiterate pikey children though

The colour banding might help.