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hello everyone jeff cote here with
boatingtechtalk.com
we've got a question from a fellow voter
uh dan dan asks jeff our friends have
installed a mooring boy in front of
their house on vancouver island
we have a 30-foot
cnc mark ii
and had an opportunity to spend most of
this
most of the summer with them oh that
sounds awesome uh we did have to catch
the ferry back to the city a number of
times and have left the boat a number of
times when we returned we had a dead
starter battery and a very low house
battery i have been reading about the e4
and wondering if it might be a perfect
solution okay
well first thing uh first things first
before we get in
a solution
i would say that if you're using your
battery switches correctly and you have
healthy batteries and that would
probably be my first step
we want we want to first assess if your
batteries are good
because for me
when i'm hearing that question
you should be able to leave a boat on a
mooring ball or at a dock
away from shore power from a period of
time and i'm talking longer than a day
two days a week
maybe even a month
and if your battery switches are off and
all your everything that should be off
is off when you show back at your boat
you're at rest battery voltage and this
is assuming you don't have solar you
don't have wind you're not connected to
anything that is recharging your
batteries including a methanol fuel cell
which is an e4
your battery voltage you know if you
haven't been using the boat and the
battery switches are off should be about
12 6 to 12 eight right assuming you have
a 12 volt system and double that if it's
a 24 volt system so
before we go into the solution we want
to make sure that when you leave the
boat
the battery switches are off you're not
leaving the refrigerator on because that
would certainly explain low house
battery but let's assume that's all done
you want to make sure that there are no
loads on your battery or very little
loads on your batteries now of course
monitoring if you have a battery monitor
a battery monitor does draw power but
it's negligible you know you should be
able to leave your boat for a week and
come back and still have power at your
battery with a battery monitor
okay all right so now that we've put
that aside
what about an ethanol fuel cell
yeah
methanol fuel cell is a device certainly
that you can consider for a mooring ball
or for leaving your boat unintended
because effectively it's a battery
charger
uh with low output you know anywhere
between you know the maybe five four and
a half amps eight and a half amps
depending on the models
like for example the e4210
outputs about eight and a half amps
dc charging and it's powered via
methanol and it can turn itself on and
off and you can have all these different
settings and that would be a good way to
keep your batteries maintained and
topped off if ever you had a discharge
like for example on my own boat
i don't have the luxury of living or
having my boat where i currently work my
boat is in a more cruiser-friendly area
on the coast and so i don't see my boat
every day and i might not see my boat
actually now for over a month
so what do i do
well
i do have solar panels so solar panels
on my boat are a way for me to recharge
my batteries in case i lose shore power
so i have solar but sometimes it rains
forever here in british columbia or it
feels like that
so what else
well the methanol fuel cell what i do is
i set it on automatic and if ever the
voltage drops to 12.2
the methanol fuel cell will kick on and
actually bring the batteries back up and
actually then will shut itself off
so what i'm thinking about i'm always
thinking about layers of redundancy i'm
geeking out right i'm thinking oh what
happens if
and so
i do everything i need to from the
battery switches turn off all the loads
next i'm hoping that if ever i have a
problem solar every day is charging even
if i my shore power cord gets
disconnected or kicked off or whatever
some accident happens the circuit
breaker trips there's a power outage
and then the methanol fuel cell is
another option especially in the winter
months when there's not as much sun
and a methanol fuel cell would be a good
way to maintain the batteries when
you're off the boat but also and that's
the reason why we recommend battery or
methanol fuel cells for some of us
is to also recharge the batteries when
you're on board because sometimes we're
on board using the boat
we're using the refrigerator using the
water pump using the stereo using the
cabin lights and we don't want to run
the engine
and we're not temp like we're happy
where we are here right now there's no
tomorrow leaving somewhere else we're at
an anchorage or away from shore power
and we want to stay here for two or
three days
well a methanol fuel cell is a way for
you to have a smaller battery bank and
having that battery bank replenished
via methanol via the e4 to recharge now
it's not the least expensive device to
put on a boat
but what i always tell boaters is
consider this when you've exhausted
having a you know the largest battery
bank that makes sense for your boat
you've done solar and if solar makes
sense and you're a place where there's
sun
again that makes sense because that
power is doesn't come with a cost the
sun is shining and it is
what about next if if option a option b
don't work
then you're left with what are their
options and some of us don't have
generators on our boat and so a methanol
fuel cell is a cost-effective way
for boaters that are not living aboard
every day but are using their boat you
know on weekends a week here 30 days a
year 60 days a year whatever it is and
that sometimes they find themselves just
missing just that much of power
and the methanol fuel cell is a way for
you to replenish for instance
and in closing
on my boat i have an e4210 so what does
that mean
it's a methanol fuel cell that on
average outputs 210 amp hours assuming
that i can act that i need that there's
other models that are 150 140 80 70
depending newer models or remodels
because they're both coexisting right
now
and so you can actually have a mule a
fuel cell that is going to generate you
know let's say 150 amp hours a day
that's on for example on this as a 30
foot cnc mark ii
you could probably end up doing even an
80
e480 or e4140 and that would be plenty
for that boat
and an e4 is about this big
this wide
and about this high
so it's not that big
and you can fit it and it's light and it
doesn't make any sound
and very little vibration basically it's
like a cat purring again if you're
curious about e4
and you want to find out more we have a
whole section on our website just on e4
a bunch of videos just on e4 and lots of
articles just on e-force so if you're
like geeking out you're at the right
place
thanks for watching
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