As part of the (finally almost complete) refit of Bream, we've put in a massive alternator to work the Lister HA2 really hard as it was clear that my usual pattern of use (using the engine for more hours to charge the batteries than to move the boat) was damaging the engine. I now have a 260A 24V alternator which flat out can put a very good load onto the engine. The only potential issue was that the engine may initially have struggled if moving the boat with very low batteries so some circuitry to reduce alternator output at such times was needed.
Expensive but worth it. A pet hate of mine is people running engines in gear on moorings so there was no way I was going to use that as a solution to the problem. The good news is that I will only have to run the engine for 1/4 of the time to generate the same power as before so I should recoup the cost over time. On the subject of low load on generators we fell victim to a generator protecting itself recently at work. Our site is protected by a very large generator which can power a couple of warehouses plus all our offices etc. One weekend we had a power cut. No-one was on site so the loading was minimal; servers, security systems etc. The genny kicked in, sensed that the load was too low and shut down. When we arrived at work the next day all the systems were down. We spoke to the manufacturers who said there was nothing we could do but leave all the lights on over the weekend. Steve NB Bream
