Getting Rid of Electrical Problems Once and For All

Electrical problems are the bane of my Tara existence. This year I resolved to tackle them completely. I hired a consultant, former TELUS CSE Jeff Cote, who now has a company called PY Systems. If you have electrical needs on a boat, they’re the guys to call.

My friend Trevor calls Jeff “Caviar” Cote – because he’s the kind of guy where only the best will do. With respect to Tara, I am OK with that. So he gave me a number of ideas and a buy list that topped $3,000 and 125 pounds, that Ross and I humped to Greece in three very heavy bags.

The heaviest thing we brought was 70 feet of 2/0 battery cable – and it turns out that the boat has 4/0 cable already installed, so 2/0 is a major step down. I’m not sure what I am going to do with it – I might use it for some accessories or I might end up selling it. Oh well … live and learn. Like someone that orders two meals because they’re hungry, I often end up biting off a little too much work. When we were at Cleopatra I installed a new alternator – 140 Amp along with a Serpentine Belt pulley conversion kit. This lets me use a standard automotive serpentine belt – like one on any car built in the last 20 years, instead of small fan belts – that break and also contribute a surprising amount of black sooty dust to the engine room.

In addition to that we had to install a new shifter – the old one had rotted away, and a new “smart” battery charger. In addition to the battery charger we had to string entirely new #2 cable from the battery charger to the battery packs. The old wire – a number 8 I think, is just too small to manage the load without dropping voltage.

I also removed the battery isolator – the device that was chewing up nearly a volt of energy in order to distribute electrons from the alternator to two battery banks. One (1) volt doesn’t sound like much but as Jeff Cote puts it … it’s huge. A dead 12 volt battery has 11.5 volts, a full one 12.5 volts. And you need 13 volts to get energy moving down the wire in order to charge the battery … so that volt has significance.

Still to go, cleaning up the wiring cabinet and simplifying it, adding some more fuses, and a meter that measures how much battery we have consumed and the rate at which it is being used.

Our new 140 Amp Alternator ... hoo hoo hoo
(channeling Tim the Tool-man )

The net of all this stuff is that our batteries are getting full, though I think we may have irreparably damaged them last year by running them flat all the time. As Jeff said, our alternator pushing out 12.4 volts is just like a trickle charger – we were always depleting our batteries and never charging them up.

Likely in next year’s budget are some Victron Energy 200AH big-ass batteries that my new alternator and battery charger (and did I mention my solar trickle charger) will keep full up… and then we won’t need to worry about electricity again!