Sketch To Sea: Power Management and CZone 

Thanks man, its been a while. Hope all is well!

Thank you for your second positive comment.

That's the plan!

Thank you for the comment. As of now, that is the plan.

Thanks, it will be fun to tweak it as we use the boat.

Thank you! Cheers!

We were turning them on and off depending on usage times. We never ran out, we just had bad timing. Leaving 1 on 24hrs a day allows us to shower anytime with out having to schedule our shower around genset time.

@@sketchtosea3750 In my design I have 1 central custom built copper heater with 2 x 48v 2000w elements. Also there are 2 coils as well. One from the DC genset to make use the waste heat from the DC generator whenever used.The second coil come from a cheap Chinese 10kw hydronic running open source firmware controlling the heater. The hydronic heater can be manually controlled or automated by home assistant with conditions. It is used when hot water demand is excessive that the DC elements can’t keep up. 95% of the time the 10KW heater is not used.

Thank you for the comment.

Thank you for the comment.

Thank you for the comment. The answer is no. In general, stabilization equipment is not used on cats.

Thank you for the question. We currently have 2 (captain and engineer). We have been looking for a chef and stew.

Yes we can use the mast head camera to see bridge clearances. We can also see the consumption of the winches via the hydraulic system. It is unlikely that it would prevent a snag though.

We have 1000L a side of fresh water, and 2 230L per hour Shenker watermakers, and then 2 torrid marine 40gal cylinders. The torrid marine cylinders have 2 heating element in them 1 at 1 KW and the other at 2KW, making peak load 3 KW. Usually once hot, it only needs the 1KW heater.

I can see why you want to turn one off, they are huge, household-sized.

Yes, it is currently in our container in Japan. We were not allowed to import it into China. We just brought the mounting hardware.

We have both dedicated usb and usbc plugs around the vessel.

We do, and we actually have 4 more batteries onboard that are dedicated to the bow truster. We may in the future add them to the house bank. I would much rather do a large refit in a few years. From the original design to now the individual batteries each have 40 amps more. I imagine in another 5-7 years that would be another 150 amps per battery. That would allow us to be a lot more reckless about usage.

@@sketchtosea3750 Why did they do that put separate batteries for bow thruster. That is just bad design and a waste for space for your lithium batteries. I only design with central batteries and have DC to DC converters for everything else. If it were a 48v system you can have the bow thrusters ( in my opening is NOT needed in a catamaran) in 48v. I went into the bow thruster rabbit hole and spent many months researching even jet thrusters. Again for a catamaran not needed because you steer with your engines not the steering wheel. However on a monohull yes a bow thruster is needed.

@@sketchtosea3750 That makes a lot of sense since battery research is racing ahead. Your battery bank is terrific now and no telling what the future brings. It is interesting to hear you talk of the original design to now the batteries have improved that much. You are the pioneer of this design and I applaud you for it. I am sure that the original design 48 volt architecture was not as robust as it is today or as it will be in 3 to 5 years. It looks like Tesla is going push foreword 48 volt to be an industry standard instead of 24 volt. I have had solar on my house for 15 years and the changes have been so amazing that my old system looks very lame. It would be easy for someone to look at it and say "what were you thinking?" They would be very right.

@@walterhiegel3020 The sad part is you cannot go higher voltage than the 48v systems and the reason is safety. Yes there are 72v 96v 144 and even higher voltage but for marine anything higher that 65v is deadly. And I am just not saying that it’s the truth. Why do you think you don’t have inverters higher than 48v there is a reason for that. I do believe in the very near future the 48v system will be the new 12v system. In my design I have 48v 24v 19v 12v and even 5v in the DC systems. On the AC side I have 230v 50HZ, 400v 3 phase 50 HZ and 120v 60HZ system. 4 inverters 3 for 3 phase and 1 for single phase. They are my custom design. ( I designed the low frequency transformer) the brains of the system is designed by an electronic engineer. The inverter can do 7KW continuous which used about 175a dc from the 48v system. The entire 48v system is my custom design and can put out 1500 amps continuous it’s 250 KW of lithium ion. All the batteries with all the wiring weighs in at exactly 1 metric ton.

There is a lot more going on than you capture in your analysis. A bow thruster for a vessel this size is extremely helpful. Most importantly when docking and anchoring. We would have had to run huge gauge cables up to the bow in order to avoid separating the banks. This would have added over a ton in cable.

Never covered up the mohawk, it was a crew morale thing. We have stuck in this shipping channel for far too long waiting on government approval to leave. The panel that you are referring to a re new technology. We had already purchased all of these ones before it was released. When a full custom yacht takes a while to build there are a few instances where we will be "victims" of technology. This was one of them.

​@@sketchtosea3750 I hope that you got the approvals sorted out, bureaucracy can be frustrating. About the panels - the speed of technology can sometimes be too fast. I guess in a few years time when they need to be replaced technology will have leaped forward again. Thanks for taking us on your journey it is fascinating.

With C-Zone there is a hardware add on by mastervolt that allows the wifi capability. Now you can use any IPad as a C-Zone interface. However what I don’t like about C-Zone first is the price it’s very expensive and only supports DC control. There is an AC control but it’s crazy expensive and limited. The worst part of C-Zone is that is is dealer locked so if you want to change your Programing you must contact a C-Zone dealer. I have worked with C-Zone in the past it’s not the worst system but it’s not the best. I prefer to go the open source route with Signal-K and home assistant. Can do everything the C-Zone can do and control both DC and AC systems with a max of 30 amps per circuit at less that 1/10 the cost of C-Zone however has a steep learning curve. You need to know a little bit of C programming for customs firmware programing . However with home assistant not only can you do automations but supports all kinds of third party hardware.

I can confirm that we have a dedicated laptop onboard to program and build our CZone. It is a PC with windows.. The programming is relatively easy, I was able to pick it up within a few hours. I cannot comment on cost as it part of the original spec. We have taken it a step further and added Sentinal. This allows us to control any of the czone systems remotely as well. Chris is not a CZone representative, he is an electrical contractor with HH catamarans. Anything that has been beyond his scope, we have had great responses from CZone. We have Ipads, and are not familiar with Android, but there is a Czone app in the app store and once you bring it onto the home network it picks it up right away.

@@sketchtosea3750 can both AC and DC be controlled by the C-Zone?

Yes, both are controlled via czone.@@darrenykema979

@@sketchtosea3750 good to know. I'm planning ahead

Thank you for the comment. The actual cylinders themselves have 2 different elements. It can be either or depending if 1 of them is on or both of them are on.

@@sketchtosea3750 Correct most hot water tanks are designed that way. With my design is same only my specs use copper instead of stainless steel it’s horizontal instead of vertical and uses 2 X 2000w DC elements instead of AC elements. It’s more efficient this way. No losses from DC to AC conversion and the inverter can power other AC items like the freezers and fridges.

Thank you for the comment.

48V was just coming out when we designed the boat.

@@sketchtosea3750 That is sad I had designed 48v systems over 10 years ago all in paper of course. The problem with 24v systems is the high current in amps. For example for a continuous load of 6000 watts AC that comes out to 300 A for 24v systems and only 150A for 48v systems. Only within the last few years there have been 48v windlass but for a boat that size like yours you would go with a 3 phase AC windlass. That is how my 50 foot is designed. It has 250 KW of lithium ion yes ion to save weight. 21k watts of 3X 7 kw continuous AC 230v AC inverters ( the inverters are part my design) In 3 phase comes out to 400v. Which can power all big boys. Chiller, water maker, dive Compressor all 3 phase and even a mig welder. Chiller can cool and heat and every unit ( air handler) has its own passive electric heater. Water heater is a custom build copper unit 100l with 2 x DC 2000W elements again for efficiency. It has 2 coil one heated by the waste heat of the custom built DC generator 42Kw unit. I could go on and one for 2 hours but this post is long enough.48v Systems have been around for a long time. Too bad I was not there while you were in the design phase. My system design is ready still lacking investment. I am planning to do day and night charting and have spoken to the proper people and they told me that I would get approved for the EU grant because the boat is 100 % green or I forgot to mention it also has 15.2 KW of solar that only weights in at 250kilos. The boat can motor 4.5 to 5 knots just on solar energy (via its 4 x 100 KW custom electric motors) alone and still produce enough power to run the entire boat off solar alone. I am still short about 100k to make my dream come through.

Sorry I meant 4 X 10KW custom electric motors.

They created a sub optimal electrical system due to yard brand loyalty. Very interesting decision. Supposedly in the favour of eaisy Czone integration. But all the system use standard MNEA2000. So integration should be brand independent. @carlospereira9838 What's your experience with this

Definitely not "sub optimal" and was not brand specific. Keep in mind that all of this was sepc'd 5 years ago. @@DarrenBainbridge