It's great how the solar, battery and motor technology is starting to make things like this possible. I'm sure we will see further efficiencies over the next few years that just keep improving things.
Yeah I think so too. My guess is that soon sailing will become a pure hobby like horse riding. To move a boat at sailboat speeds people will just use solar electric.
Excellent - really great to see and thanks for sharing. Makes my set-up look very amateur and gives loads of ideas of how to improve it. (But then we sail 95% of the time.) Hope the boom-raising and sail-fitting go well.
Hi, just a comment about solar panel in series and parallel, you are correct when saying if connected in Parallel and one is in the shade you lose only one panel , but it’s not correct to say, that in the case the two panels are in series and if one is shaded you lose both, and that is because all solar panels have internally the so called by pass Diode, if a panel gets shaded in a series the bypass diode will bypass that one and you keep one working, the same as in parallel 👍
I love the Load Output feature on the smaller Victron MPPT’s and see that you aren’t making use of it currently. You might consider wiring them up to a Bus Bar located near your main wiring panel and feeding some of your accessories so you can use Bluetooth or a scheduled timer to control things like lighting. For example you could remotely control turning on/off lighting in your “engine room” via the App. Of course those outputs mimic whatever Voltage output you have the MPPT set at, so a Voltage converter might be required depending on voltage of your accessories. Hope you get the steering/maneuverability issues sorted out.
Yeah I was really glad these MPPTs do have the load output, but since it's a 48v output, I couldn't figure out what to use it for. I do have a bunch of smart plugs controlling things around the boat which is easy to set up times for and control via bluetooth which I love and highly recommend. I have a plan for docking, set the motors to significant toe in when docking. I spoke to an engineer who says that at the moment 12.5% or my thrust is translated into rotational force. If I can set the motors to 45 degrees toe-in that would rise to 62.5%, so I'd get 5 times as much which I think will be plenty. I'll do a video once it's done comparing both positions.
@@SailingElectra DC Buck converters are pretty inexpensive and reliable. I use them to step down from 24V to 12V to power lights, USB charge ports, and linear actuators using my Victron load outputs. Will be interesting to see if your plan for maneuvering works. My concern is with the motors so close together toed in, and one pushing and the other pulling, that the props may cavitate/slip due to water turbulence. Don’t know until you try. I have seen large sailing cats with dual electric motors similarly mounted across the rear beam experience cavitation due to the motors being out in the open instead of behind a transom. A cavitation plate improved performance in one of the boats. Keep in mind that your motors are 6kW input power and probably put out half that at full speed, so really they are more like 3kW or roughly 4HP since ICE motors are rated by power output at the prop. When you compare the figures and the performance in this way, electric propulsion is even more impressive given the motors are comparable in performance up to their max RPM to an ICE more than 2X their power. My boat and propulsion system is much smaller than yours, but I am able to cruise at 5mph on sun only with each motor drawing 250W. Using dual independent thrust as my only means of steering isn’t as efficient as a rudder/tiller, but makes maneuvering windy shallow rivers, docking and captaining so much better, it will be hard to ever go back to babysitting a tiller!
Brilliant, I am looking to do the same and almost got the cat last fall but someone beat me to it. Not many project cat's in Denmark but one will show up I'm sure. Did you do a video of the costs and time spent to build it?
Just watched this for the third time. Great video Patrick. I'm currently in talks with EPropulsion UK at getting four Navy 6 to work on my new cat. My batteries arrived a fortnight ago, six Seplos Mason vertical kits., using the Eve LF304 cells. They will be the heart of my system. I'm just getting the panels ready for mounting. I don't think I'm going to be in the water until late summer but I do want to be in the Med for next winter or somewhere warmer than the UK. Is there a reason why you don't full-time on your boat? Is it possible do you think to survive on solar and at anchor in the Med or should I be thinking of heading further south, like Madeira or the Canary Islands or Cape Verde?
Sounds great, is that 6 X 48 X 304AH/93kwh? Very impressive if it is. If I had a much bigger cat I would also do 4 E propulsion motors. I have huge efficiency gains running two motors instead of one, I suspect 4 would be even better and you get to stick with 48V which I prefer to the bigger 96V motors ePropulsion has. The main reason we left the boat for winter was to get residence set up in Portugal to take advantage of a very favourable tax incentive that was expiring. If we had to stay anchor we would need to be in the southern med. Might try this on Greece next season. This year we were near Venice and it's simply too cold. The only electric heat we run on batteries is an electric they're style blanket. Draws very little pretty and heats us well. In the Venice area when we were onboard at the end of the season we used a 2kw electric heater. It heated the boat well, but at anchor I couldn't run it for more than 3 to 4 hours max in winter if we weren't moving. A diesel heater would make living at anchor in winter much easier, but I suspect we'd just get a winter berth next year and use the electric.
@@SailingElectra Yes that's correct, 90kWh or thereabouts. Great to think extra efficiency will come from more motors. I will have to watch your water maker video again... expect more questions😂
This is a super interesting video. Thanks for doing a walkthrough of the system. Any reason why you decided to build your own battery bank rather than use the Epropulsion batteries? Is there a major benefit to having your own? I'm really interested in doing something similar to your setup but with twin pod drives on my prout start of next year. Trying to work out the wiring and battery choices are holding me up.
I’ve seen it several times on different boats where people would opt for creating their own battery banks because of the very low cost. They end up with way more power storage and the same exact if not even better quality battery banks. I am not an expert and don’t understand a lot of things but I definitely understand cost saving and the ridiculous situation when people think they have to get a brand name!!!
The ePropulsion batteries are really expensive for the capacity you get. I've also heard some people occasionally have issues where they don't want to turn on when they should. For me though, the main reason was that since I put it together I can troubleshoot it myself as I know what every single wire does now. Don't be too concerned about building your own pack, it's really extremely simple, and there's tons of advice, support and videos online on how to do it. It was a huge toss up for me whether I go for pods or outboards. The pods would give me better steering with differential thrust, and are always ready to go, but the outboards don't stay in the water so don't need to be anti-fouled, I can remove them if something goes wrong without lifting the boat. I also don't have any holes in my boat with the current setup. The other thing which I don't know, is would there be an efficiency loss if the pods push water onto the rudders rather than into clean water as with the outboards. It's a very tough decision, and I'm still not convinced I made the right choice, but I'm also not convinced I made the wrong choice :)
I made my prout 31 electric, which prout do you have? I also made my own battery and have an epropulsuon motor. Benefits of diy battery is weight, size and price
Hi Darren, it's hard to say. On my port engine I see the fan warning light flashing quite often. The only thing that fixes it is to turn the power off and back on. This has been happening pretty much since new. Someone else had a similar issues and it turned out the tiller handle port was causing the issues. His dealer removed that port and his went away. Mine only comes on so infrequently that at the moment it's not a worry, but if I'm somewhere near a dealer it may be worth having them check it out. Just one note, I almost never exceed 1500w per motor, so it might also be that the fan isn't required very often at all.
Appreciate this breakdown. Here is a rough cost breakdown of his system. Those EVE batteries have gotten extremely cheap: -16 eve 280 batteries WITH shipping $1900 (USA) - 2 propulsion Navy 6.0 ($3600 each) $7200 - 2600w solar panels and controllers/inverters/wiring ~ $4000 Approx $13000 total. I would add $1000 for spare wires and controllers etc. and for another $1900 you could double the battery capacity and run the motors completely overnight 24/7 on autopilot. You can often find an older boat like this for cheap and do much of the work yourself. Even if the engine doesn’t work, you can usually get some money selling it for spare parts. FYI each 3.2v eve battery weighs 5.4 kg or approx 12lbs. So a set of 16 is 86kg or 190lbs. So doubling the capacity adds almost no weight penalty for any kind of sailboat. Having 2 9.9 outboards and 100gal would weigh about 800 lbs. you actually have significant weight savings AND the system pays for it self in fuel and maintenance savings in 2-3 years. Great vid
Hahahahaha. I’ve design some version of this set up for a boat in Florida, (either a catamaran or trimaran) but never gotten around to it. I’m starting with a couple of smaller projects hopefully done this summer. I’m going to try and use open source drone software to build an autopilot for it on my phone. I also want to experiment with adding electric heat for winter. I think If you use the cheap 12v 100w heaters that are mainly used in cars, it should pencil out for winterization. Especially if you get strategic with the heater placement and add some insulation (and probably some fans). I bet you could keep your cabin warm with 300-500w. Cheers.
@@charlestwitchell4634 check out Pieter Oskam on youtube, he developed a bluetooth autopilot using some pretty cheap hardware and the phone's sensors. I think it's pretty cool. I will need a new brain for my old autohelm st4000 at some point, and I'm looking at something open source. My options so far are pipilot or the bluetooth autopilot. This is the bluetooth: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-NfIQvlnSPjg.html
Great video. Are you comparing it to a HopYacht, they have double the battery, but half the solar. They’re only like 12’ wide, I don’t think they can fit more solar on them if so.
Well spotted Steven, yes that's the boat I was comparing to. They definitely couldn't fit more solar onto the boat, but if they added an arch they could squeeze 3 more panels on the back similar to how I've done mine. I suspect with those slim hulls, 2800W of solar and the 28kwh battery pack it would be an absolutely great performer with very little need for ever plugging in.
You have the multiplus 48/3000. I currently have the 48/5000. I was anxious that while induction cooking i couldnt use other applicience like an oven or waterboiler. Did you every experience a shortage from from 3kva? I perhaps want to switch to the 3kva version because it is smaller and lighter and uses less stand by power.
I haven't run into any issues yet. The inverter does have the ability to go up to much more power for short periods of time, and I can't run the induction hob on full for too long before it burns the food! On 5 it uses closer to 1kW, the microwave is around 1800W on full, the kettle 800W but also just for a short time. My water heater is 1500W, but I run that in the day when the sun is shining and cook at night mostly so they don't interfere. I use a bunch of smart plugs all over the boat and they're brilliant. I was going to set the induction one to turn off the water heater while it is on use but didn't bother in the end. It would be my answer though if it was a problem.
Yeah I've had it happen once that the one remote ran out of battery becausei kept it out of the sun too long. All I had to do was plug it into the cable from the motor again and it switched to wired control and wired charging.
