An electrical can of worms

[Dr Bradley]

My sailaway is due in couple of weeks and the first job is to install the electrics. I will need a fairly big domestic battery bank and have been looking at the systems which will give me the best performance. The system will be designed to run without shorepower, but I intend to have solar panals and wind grnerator. I will be cruising uch of the tme and so expect the engine to give good charge to the betteries, but there may be occasions when I don't move for a week or two. I have a 2500 watt generator.

 

From my reading of the adverts, stering systems seem to be a good price and relatively easy to fit, however two hire firms have told me that they have removed sterling gear because they are not reliable enough. Doe anyone have any advce of what I should fit. am competant at house wirng, know somethng about DC systems (nothing lke some members on here to who I bow as gods) and have a tame elecrician on hand for anything beyond my ability. Whose sytem shoulkd I install?

[blackrose]

Victron stuff is fairly well regarded, but then I've heard about problems with some of their gear too.

 

You'll have to check that any charger or combi you want to use in conjuction with your generator will run from the sinewave it puts out.

[Gary Peacock]

Victron or Mastervolt if you want serious kit.

 

Much of the cheaper stuff is very much just a choice of label and price you are prepared to pay.

[Machpoint005]

I'm no expert in boat electrics but it occurs to me to wonder whether the reputation - bad or good - of certain makes of kit is more to do with substandard design and installation of the whole system than the poor individual products of this-or-that company. If you install a wrongly-specified electric widget, or put the right widget into a system it wasn't intended to cope with, things go pop. The widget gets the blame, even though the fault is with the duck-egg who fitted the wiring in the first place.

[Gary Peacock]

I'm no expert in boat electrics but it occurs to me to wonder whether the reputation - bad or good - of certain makes of kit is more to do with substandard design and installation of the whole system than the poor individual products of this-or-that company. If you install a wrongly-specified electric widget, or put the right widget into a system it wasn't intended to cope with, things go pop. The widget gets the blame, even though the fault is with the duck-egg who fitted the wiring in the first place.

 

Most of the good (and more costly) kit is designed to be fairly idiot proof plus provides good protection from overloading etc, while cheaper kit is often cheaper because it is less expensive to not incorporate such features.

 

End users in reality are the biggest source of "faulty" kit returned, they blow it up doing daft things and send it back saying it doesn't work!

If you know the faults you can usually identify the cause, so it makes a lot of good business sense to provide protection to prevent the end user creating the fault in the first place.

[tosher]

My sailaway is due in couple of weeks and the first job is to install the electrics. I will need a fairly big domestic battery bank and have been looking at the systems which will give me the best performance. The system will be designed to run without shorepower, but I intend to have solar panals and wind grnerator. I will be cruising uch of the tme and so expect the engine to give good charge to the betteries, but there may be occasions when I don't move for a week or two. I have a 2500 watt generator.

 

From my reading of the adverts, stering systems seem to be a good price and relatively easy to fit, however two hire firms have told me that they have removed sterling gear because they are not reliable enough. Doe anyone have any advce of what I should fit. am competant at house wirng, know somethng about DC systems (nothing lke some members on here to who I bow as gods) and have a tame elecrician on hand for anything beyond my ability. Whose sytem shoulkd I install?

 

My boat is 18 months old and has a Sterling "Alternator to Battery" charger, a Sterling "Battery to Battery" charger, a Sterling 3KW Pure sine wave combi unit/Inverter and several remote control stations. All worked faultlessly until recently when the charger section of the combi unit would ocasionally trip spuriously when on shore power.I contacted Sterling who asked me to return it to them which I did and they immediately replaced it with a brand new one under warranty. There kit carries a 2 year warranty and is something well worth concidering when buying expensive new equipment. Hope that helps. tosher