Danny,
If I were you I would certainly install solar. With your use you don’t need huge solar panel to top up your batteries. You should be ok with as little as 25-30 W of power (which would give you around 1 -1.5 A charging in normal circumstances). The rollable solar panels don’t require any special installation; you can put them over your bimini the doger or even over the coachhouse. The cost would be around $300 plus another $150 for a decent charge controller. Btw. if you go this route, don’t skimp on the charge controller - it will make substantial difference. We don’t have shore power in our Club and when I got this boat over 3 years a go I installed the solar system. I have only 2 batteries there, but my 21 W panel and a Morningstar controller keep the batteries in perfect shape. The total cost of the system was under $500. Or you can buy a rigid panel (they are more efficient and usually cheaper) and mount it permanently. But this requires some extra project work. The problem with our use (yours as much as mine) is that in the half hour or so we use the motor the batteries could never be topped up properly. It would take hours of running the motor to charge them to a real 100% SoC. The best what we could count on is about 80% (bulk charge); in order to bring them up higher you need a long period of low charge. The solar is perfect for that. If your batteries are standard flooded cells, not keeping them up to 100% is less harmful than with any gel cells or AGMs. But still batteries last longer if you keep them well charged most of the time. Btw. a generator would not help you that much. You would need to run it for hours in order to keep the batteries fully charged. Marek 1994 C270, “Legato” Ottawa, ON From: CnC-List [mailto:cnc-list-boun...@cnc-list.com] On Behalf Of Danny Haughey via CnC-List Sent: Saturday, February 27, 2016 22:23 To: cnc-list@cnc-list.com Cc: Danny Haughey <djhaug...@juno.com> Subject: Re: Stus-List Stus-list: portable generator on sale at harbor freight Rick, She has a house bank of 3 group 27s and a starting battery. Maybe I should just get a solar panel now. I had a small one I would hook up when leaving the boat on lolita. I also understand keeping your batteries topped up prolongs their life. We usually use the boat every weekend and do weekends on her here and there and then, we plan on doing maybe 2 one week cruises around the islands here. We do have a refer and use lights, charging tablets and phones. Just your regular convenience type usage. Danny
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