Another sailor, Garrett had a new Honda Generator destroyed by a wave. Very little tolerance for salt water. I have a 44 LB Sichuan Sifa 3 horsepower MB168F diesel. I oversized the 20 MM crankshaft to an inch with an adapter, and installed a big 7 inch pulley. It's perfect for a car alternator. Just mount it on a thick aluminum plate and not a steel frame. The other issue with air cooled diesels on boats is big fuel tanks always leak in. Water contamination.
We have had really good luck with Westinghouse generators. They are less temperamental than Honda and cost about half as much. We have had our 2200 Westinghouse for about 3 years now and we just added another 3700 Westinghouse to be able to run air conditioning on really hot nights at anchor.
You guys know a hybrid electric boat has at least twice the range. Even a 1200 watt electric outboard is like having 10 Vikings rowing for you on 4 hour shifts.
A new Honda vs an Old Fisher Panda you made the right choice! A Honda vs a New Northren Lights 1800 rpm diesel genset? A no brainer for me. As you say there is no right answer for everyone. I would never have a diesel generator that was not running at 1800rpm. I had a Kohler 4kw powered by a Yanmar 2gm. Bought it used for $700. Never really needed a lot of parts. Ran quiet, easily powered a 16000btu AC unit and fuel use was minimal. Still running strong for the new owner of boat I sold. Anyway enjoy your channel. Love sailing. Do not quite get the whole total electric thing. JP
Hey, l've had 2 x honda 3kva gen set for ages on the cat....years..no problems...one fuel only on board..runs everything..48v charger..a/c..hotwater. Once l set up the 48v solar & start using the regen l hopefully won't use them much...& the 2kva's are magic....cheers
I think your spot on. My diesel engine failed long ago, just sail only now with a small 4 stroke whippersnipper engine driving a car alternator for lights etc.
If you have an AC Induction motor it is possible to convert it into a generator if you are out sailing. Put it in regen mode if you have it and that will cause the prop to turn and generate power for your battery. However, you'd need to use it in stronger winds because it will create drag. Not sure if you have tried that but it is possible. If you are running just a series dc then my post is a moot point.
Great video guys. Let me add a few things. MAny of us hates the large diesel inboard engine - dirty, heavy, noise, vibration, etc. However - even being lucky to have a boat - we still do not have endless time for sailing - so when we plan our passage, we need to start the engine if the wind dies. IT means quite lot of motoring, unfortunately. your gas genertor is great, light. but it is aircooled and you would not be able to take it to the engine room. If you need more petrol than what you can easily carry, it is also where diesel comes to picture. All in all, a lightweight diesel, watercooled inboard genny is the best - plus an electric engine.
That would give you great range and speed! Especially a DC generator as it would power the motor directly instead of going through other steps to get from AC to DC.
@@RiggingDoctor that is exactly the system i am building - using watercooled controller, traction motor, 15kw dc(!) generator - all are from wrecked hybrid cars :)
That will be an awesome setup! At 5kw, we are moving quickly, so being able to sustain higher power levels means you can motor against a current for a long time! If we could have motored at 5kw all the time, the ICW would have been a very different experience!
@@RiggingDoctor thank you very much for your advice! It is a great data you provided me. The most difficult is to get information what is in the electric consumption of a traction motor on a 38-40 feet boat in real circumstances. So far I only took reference of our long-term average diesel consumption, corrected by the estimated efficiency of a 30-year-old yanmar+transmission...
My concern is the gasoline storage. It is more dangerous by far than diesel and it has a lot shorter shelf life. Plus the gumming carburetor problem that can occur.
Your sailing, why not get a miniature wind turbine or a small aqua turbine to plop down in the water and it spins as long as the boats moving, either should be plenty to charge your electric motor up and you can just take it down after you have a full charge. I know in my area Menards sells the miniature wind turbine for 400usd. I mean its free and maintenance is very low, just grease up the barings and at worse just replace the ball barings which are everywhere. You would only need an inverter to connect it right to the battery charger. If going green is the goal anyway. You could even get some of those cloth like solar panels and attach them to your sail if you are worried about space.
Thanks for the suggestion about the mini windvane. Our motor works as a hydrogenator and when we crossed the ocean, it actually met all our electrical needs. The only time we have needed the generator since we left the US was in Bermuda and in Horta (Azores) to charge up the motor bank after motoring in through the harbor. Other than that we haven’t used it much at all! The solar panels take about 1 week to charge the motor batteries up, so if we have the time before we need the motor again (which we usually do) then we wait and don’t use the generator!
Very Good Points, as Usual. Although the Diesel can run for years trouble-free, What If it Doesn't? They are simple enough that you and Herbie can Overhaul it in the cockpit, but if a part is broken or unuseable, BIG Money. And perhaps LONG Waits for parts. I agree, in YOUR Case, Unjustifiable Expense. You can always just WAIT for a Sunny Day...
Having owned boat (s), and sailed, we had a 1000 Watt Honda, and we loved it. If we were docked, it sat on the dock and ran. I think that any engine IN your boat is a big headache. We did both a power boat and a sailboat. We did not do blue water sailing.
It’s a comparison of gas vs diesel generators. New gas is $1k, new diesel is $14k+ installation! Our case was a $100 beat up generator that spurred the discussion of gas vs diesel
@@RiggingDoctor I understand you are comparing those two generators. New diesel generators are very much different (modernized) than the one you had and last more than twice the lifetime of any gas power engine for less than $5K. Just sayin. ;)
I couldn’t find any like that. I was looking at Fisher Panda and Northern Lights. Both of these were crazy expensive (new). For the price of a new diesel, we could buy several gas generators and never have to worry about repairs or rebuilds since a new one will still keep us under the original purchase price of one of those diesel units.
@@RiggingDoctor A diesel solution is going to be more expensive than a comparable 4 stroke gas generator set. However, if our point of reference is a 2 kW Honda suitcase unit, our diesel equivalent would not be anything that involves "installation" or five figures, would it? That's an entirely different comparison: a high powered fixed setup vs. a small inexpensive portable unit. Either can be gasoline or diesel powered, and there's very little difference at all if not used that much. Most importantly the diesel will have better fuel economy especially should the over sized system be run at partial load. You don't want heavy and large additional equipment and you don't need high power; you only want a very lightweight generator. The choice in your specific use scenario is a portable Honda, but not because it's gas or because it's not diesel - because it's excellent.
Great to know they last a long time and can be dependable. Any tricks on keeping the starting cord from chafing? The original one chafed through and I replaced it with dyneema. It’s starting to chafe a little and it’s only been about 100 hours.
@@RiggingDoctor you have a rough spot on the metal insert in the plastic case. Next time you take it off use some good epoxy to build it up and smooth it out. It's caused by pulling at an angle rubbing in the same spot all the time.
Will do! I made the new pull string really long so I can go trimming the chafed part off as I scoot the handle further in. I pretty much had to dismantle the whole unit to get to the starter cable!
The points you bring up are very sound. Also if you are going to put a diesel generator on board that big you might as well go to a diesel engine instead of the electric.
Yeah as long as it's a couple gas cans on the deck for emergency power I don't see a huge drawback to a cheap gasoline generator. I just don't ever want the stuff in a tank below a deck.
Great info, thanks. You mentioned previously that during crossings, the regen along with solar was enough to keep the batteries full. Is that still the case or you rely heavily o the generator?
It was the case while crossing. The solar panels were plenty to keep the boats house systems running, and could charge the motor bank back up in about a week. This works great if we are sailing everywhere and only motoring into anchorages. When we were in the ICW, we were motoring everyday and relied on the generator to produce power to charge the batteries back up every day. In the Azores, we are relying on the generator to run our power tools.
I wouldn't have that Panda generator either. The thing is I do prefer diesel on a boat don't get me wrong, I understand why you did what you did. That Panda is a nightmare to operate. Most of the ones I have had the pleasure to know lasted about 500 hrs and then needed a major rebuild.. Seriously!!!!I would make a box for the stern and buy one of the cheaper $1000ish air cooled Changfa/Yamaha based diesel generators. That way it could be air cooled and give you a good sized propulsion boost by allowing for more charging. Though your generator may be the right size, a bigger genset might mean the difference between getting out of a bad tidal/no wind situation. Also most fires on boats I hear are caused by gasoline fumes. Diesel burns it doesn't explode like gasoline. Considering you already have a huge diesel tank, shlepping around a lot of gasoline tanks might at some point get old. Considering you can pull up to a dock and just fill up a hundred gallons of diesel is pretty appealing to me. I have a Changfa 5 kw I've been running since 2007 with no issues. It has 7600 hrs on it and still starts after one rotation and has manual or electric start. At 1/4 load it will run about 4.5 to 5 hours. It weighs I think about 80 lbs by my estimate and can certainly be carried by two decent sized people with no issues for short distances. Examples www.ebay.com/itm/Lombardini-Diesel-Generator-Power-Guard-Generator-Powr-Gard/263870678381?hash=item3d6feb056d:g:6kYAAMXQVERS48Cx www.ebay.com/itm/Yanmar-YDG-3000E-Diesel-Generator-Works-Read/254006229414?hash=item3b23f379a6:g:X2sAAOSw11Bb7cWy Mine is pretty much like the Yanmar and the Changfa engine is a clone of the Yanmar.
What size is your battery charger ? When the drive bank (210 AHr @ 48V) is down to 50% SOC, how long would it take recharge using your generator ? Can you recharge the house batteries from the drive bank ? (They do make DC-DC chargers.)
Our battery charger is 15 amps @48v. Charge time is about 10 with the charger we have from 50%. We have a 48vDC to 12vDC converter that we use to let the motor Regen power our fridge.
@@RiggingDoctor - you are not going to put much energy back into that battery bank just running the generator for an hour or two before entering a harbor/mooring. I think the generator could handle a 30A@48V charger, but it would be expensive !
We had a 25amp @48v charger and then it died. A friend gave us his old 15amp @48v charger because he wasn’t using it. We greatly appreciated it since it saved us several hundred dollars, but it sure is a slow charge! That charger is now dead and we will be replacing it with a much larger charger, something that will push the generator to its limits and give us more power.
Don't know the size of their motor but for our 30 foot Dory we can run the motor at 3 knots with the generator running and we have a 0 discharge of the battery. The generator can keep up at this point. However if the batteries are dead or not there at all the generator can not run the motor by itself. Dennis
I still have no idea how many watts at 48 volts your electric drive uses. Knowing that you would have an idea of how big a generator is needed to run the motor full time powered by the diesel generator. Your probably producing 120 v at ?amps/watts and running it into a 48volt battery charger at so much output working backward you can probably come up with the size generator you need to run the boat. Then, you can see if you can find a place on board to mount it. It seems like it might be a solution to the having a way to use the electric motor more when needed. Like in the doldrums or ICW.
The motor draws 400 amps at 48v at full power. When we are getting somewhere, we draw anywhere from 25a to 70a at 48v. If we are trying to get far and have a long run time, we keep the draw to under 15a, but then our speed drops to about 2 knots.
1. Gasoline is explosive, flammable, and starts to slowly go bad immediately even with fuel stabilizers. It is very volatile. It evaporates readily leaving impurities which reduce combustion of the remaining fuel. 2. Diesel is not explosive, not really flammable, and stores indefinitely with some biocides and a pack of fuel filters. Diesel does not evaporate. Diesel can be cheaper per gallon and has more power per gallon vs gasoline. Winner: Diesel. Gasoline is so dangerous that it requires a bilge blower. I saw a jetski explode on the boat ramp last month from 2stroke gasoline fumes which ignited then Boom, followed by a good fire. The only positive for Gasoline is that some gas is also required for a dinghy outboard so the gas fuel supply can be shared. Diesel outboards for dinghies no longer exist which is a bummer but also a fact of thermodynamics, diesel engines must be engineered larger and heavier than gas engines so it is hard to make them light enough for dinghy use plus no one likes the diesel NOx toxic exhaust fumes so close to people. Because boat fires and volatile fuel explosions are the #1 cause of boat destruction & boat injury, I'm hoping to also get rid of my propane tanks and propane stove-oven setup and replace with electric induction cooktop run off of inverter. (I already use electric glass top induction stove for cooking on the boat with AC supplied from shore, has worked great for years). Moral of the story is, it is better to eliminate volatile fuels from the boat, and gasoline is also one of those volatile fuels.
Very good points. We keep our gasoline jugs on the deck as well as the generator. Any fumes are whisked away by the wind, but we still need to be careful around the liquid (and vapors). Our thoughts were: portable vs inboard, inexpensive vs expensive, and replaceable vs repairable (has Vs. diesel).
@@RiggingDoctor Current prices; 1. Gasoline generator. Honda EU2200i 2.2kW peak, 1.8 kW continuous, $1,000 off the shelf, not fixed install. Weight 47 lbs. ~8 hrs/1 gal gas. Cost equates to ~$600/kW. 2. Diesel generator. Next Generation Kubota 3.5 kW continuous genset, semi-fixed install. $6,000. ~180 lbs. ~6 hrs/1 gal diesel. Cost equates to $1,700/kW. Better comparison of the Kubota is to Honda EG4000 gas generator 3.5 kW continuous, 150 lbs, fixed install. $1,600. ~2.5 hrs/1 gal gas. Cost equates to ~$500/kW. Efficiency of gas engine diminishes with engine size, for gas smaller is better. Whereas diesel scales more linearly. Also I would bet the diesel gen will run sooth for decades whereas gas gen will have limited lifetime. So I vote diesel generator which is likely what I will install when the time comes to ditch my 25HP diesel engine for electric motor to go fully hybrid.
The max power it can put out at any point in time is 2000W. We use it to power our tools and run the battery charger, so we never push it to the full 2kW that it could produce,.
They are rather costly to buy and install. We meet all our needs with the meager solar array we have so we haven’t felt the need to buy a wind generator.
$1000 you spent on the Honda generator would have bought you 1.5 Kw of solar panels 😀. Finding a place to attach them is another story. That’s why it is nice to have a large bimini.
You can`t run an electric sailboat only on solar panels, because you need the electricity for other issues like fridge, light, instruments. 1,5 kw sounds much, but you get it only when the sun stands high, no clouds and no shade on it, and so on. I have two yanmars 6,5 kw on my catalac 9m, with the collected electricity of your mentioned solar panels I could run an electric motor about 3 hours, that gives me a range of less than ten miles, because with an similar electric motor the boat will make not more than 3knots on a flat sea. I am waiting for their lourneys through the med where you have no wind or strong wind on the nose. I try to sail as much as possible, but sometimes it is just dangerous to have a boot with so less motor range. I also use 300w solarpanels to keep my batteries full and my fridge running, Two cluody days and the batteries are empty. There was a big cat with only electric propulsion called solar wave some years before. I saw it between corfu and the mainland in greece, the last couple of days were a little bit cloudy and a big thunderstorm was approachiing, we reached the next sheltered bay within one and a half hour, meantime solar waves engines shut of, no more electricity and they had to stay on open sea through the thunderstorm.
You get nearly twice the KW pr gallon with a diesel generator than you do with a gas powered unit. However, that looks like a Ferryman single cylinder diesel there good to 3.6 KW. That thing HAMMERING along @ 3600 RPM would piss me off in rather short order.
Well this will be good, I can see the advantage of the petrol generator and your outboard motor as you only have to have one fuel. By the way first and now been first on about 7 Sailing channels, why because I had about 3 days of work and I have my iPad on a lot.
They create a bunch of power, but our electric motor does the same function. The only issue with hydrogenators is they require significant speed through the water.
You just picked the worst diesel unit you could unknowingly, comparing isn't really fair in that regard. I'm a diesel mechanic and work on diesel cars, all the same, its all about picking a reputable model!
We never installed it and gave it to a friend who wanted a “project”. Boy did it end up having issues! We were comparing the theoretical situation of a diesel vs gas generator. In both camps, good ones will work, bad ones will give headaches! Based on all the feedback about this particular generator, we are glad we didn’t install it!!
I'm watching lots of your older videos these days. What I really like about your videos is the fact that I can learn something new in most of them. So thanks for that. Some points I was missing: 1. Most cruisers have a dinghy running on gasoline, so you already have gasoline on board that you can also use for the generator. With a diesel generator you would need a diesel tank that you wouldn't need otherwise. (Assuming you have an electric motor, not a diesel engine) 2. Diesel can go bad ("diesel bug" - a microbial contamination). I also heard about gasoline going bad, but I'm not sure, if that's really true and I think at least it is less likely to happen with gasoline. 3. You can turn a gasoline generator into a hybrid - so it also runs on butane/propane. That's my preferred option, since the exhaust doesn't smell as bad as diesel exhaust and propane is cheaper than gasoline. Propane is sometimes hard to get (since you also need the right bottles or connectors...), but if you run out of propane, you still can run the generator on gasoline. 4. Diesel is less of a fire hazard than gasoline or propane. 5. Diesel usually is cheaper than gasoline. So in the long run, a diesel generator might become the more cost effective solution. But to achieve that, you have to run the generator a lot... I mean a loooooot.
So you got rid of the auxiliary engine (not sure why but it was probably had it) and installed an electric motor. I understand your desire to be more environmentally friendly but in my mind you have now over complicated the whole thing. Solar on its own is usually not enough for most cruising boats and most add a wind generator as well, and that’s not having to worry about the draw from an electric motor. If you had just installed a small modern common rail Diesel engine (I have a Lombardini in my boat) all of you’re requirements would have been satisfied as they are efficient, eco friendly, quiet and very reliable for a long time. Anyway just saying. Enjoy your videos.
Hi, Lombardini is about the last company producing small watercooled diesel engines - perfect for a genset. THe small lombardini (1003 cc) may not enough to power a large sailboat, but usingas a genset is perfect to power an electric motor.
Glad you commented. We liked the electric for many reasons on top of it's small environmental impact. We no longer have to carry jugs of diesel on our long passages, the motor requires no maintenance such as oiling, it acts as a hydrogenorator and actually gives us power, and we barely motor anywhere anyway. On the crossing we had no shortage of power even though our solar panels all died because the motor was able to provide for all our needs. And we don't have a wind gen. So, the electric motor makes a lot of sense for us!
Its a no brainer, petrol genny, and if you have an motor for your dinghy, it uses the same fuel. You defo dont want yet another tank (diesel ) of fuel taking up space. Good choice, logical!
I probably shouldn't talk having little experience with gens, but gasoline is far more dangerous to stow onboard and I would definitely factor that in. A lot of people store extra fuel cans for their diesel inboard anyway.
Very subjective opinion on very niche puropose and on even more niche model of diesel engine. I mean this video can't be more irrelevant to thumbnail. Diesel engine in my opinion are more efficient and more reliable in cold weather. But I still think that upfront cost is a bit high.
Everything on an electric sailboat is niche :) Many years after this video, our gas Honda generator died and we were able to replace it with a Westinghouse for $500. For that price, we got a brand new generator! Something you really can’t do with a built in motor, or either fuel form. The suitcase style generators really are convenient in that regard.
@@RiggingDoctor yeah, I get it. Still since weight is one of the priorities diesel generator is out but from safety perspective and fuel density. I think k it's a go.
I’ve got a eu2000i that’s set for propane. Super clean. The company that did it did a splendid job. (genconnexdirect.net/honda_generator_propane_kits.htm#xl_EU2000i:32KIT ) I’m not connected with them in any way. Just a satisfied customer.
