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hi everyone jeff cote here with

boatingtechtalk.com

i've got a question from a fellow boater

uh chris

chris reaches out and asks jeff

i have a french built sailboat with 24

volts and 220

50 hertz ac uh electrical

shore power here in the u.s is 110

60 hertz so here's this this is a very

important key right the difference is

not only voltage 220 in europe 110

mostly here

in north america

but also

the frequency 50 hertz in europe

and 60 hertz here and the frequency is

the issue it's easy to change voltage

but

voltage and frequency conversion is

totally doable

bigger boats do it all the time many

north ovens come up with standard

package and salines and everyone else

definitely lots of company to do it

we've installed them they work

but the challenge is

what about for some boaters they can't

fit in those big devices right a device

that both converts frequency and voltage

they can't afford it you know they're a

lot of money

um and so

most of us would love that solution you

know give me any voltage give me any

frequency and let me

whatever input you have give it to me

and i'll create the output i want that's

what the big trawlers that go around the

world do and it's certainly convenient

but for some of us we don't have that

option so in this case and this is

chris's choice

what should he do

right so you've got an ac system built

for europe and you have you're now

connecting to a shore power system that

is north american

one of the option um is to basically

create

so you connect your battery charger to

shore power right so you basically end

up having a north american shore power

system north american 38 30 amp outlet

you put an elci breaker 30 app

right

and what you're doing is you're gonna

then have a breaker for maybe an outlet

that is 120 right on the boat maybe

you're going to put an outlet somewhere

but maybe not maybe you don't need 120

at all and you choose to not use 120

for anything else

to run potentially a battery charger and

that battery charger and that's the good

news with battery chargers is battery

chargers can actually be run on

different frequencies and different

voltages

and they're pretty much the only devices

well not only but one of the very few

devices that we have on boats that can

do both

they can both take a high range of

voltage and also take a frequency range

so what you end up doing is you have a

battery charger connected through a ac

system that is built for north america

and that's not too bad elci galvanic

isolator again not crazy dedicated ac

panel and the whole purpose of that is

just to power what to power a battery

charger

and a battery charger um

you know generally is a large 12 volt

one uh and you can get 24 volt because

this um chris has a 24 volt you could

probably get a 100 amp

24 volt battery charger uh master volt

makes one

we've installed them they're great

and

now you could actually take that power

and have 200 amps of charging current

going but that's two now that's 100 amps

at 24 which would be 200 amps at 12. so

you've got 100 amps at 24 and then you

take whatever power comes into the

battery bank gets converted via an

inverter to 220

volts at 50 hertz so you're literally

playing through a conversion now the

problem with this setup

is that ultimately you're limited for

continuous draw to whatever current

output your charger can do and in this

this instance it can only do 100 amps at

24.

but by the time you do conversion that's

not 100 amps at 220. that's a 100 amps

and 24 going a bad battery bank and then

the inverter charger pulls from that

battery bank so you can't run big loads

you can't run 3000 watts because the

charger is not outputting 3 000 watt

right it's outputting less than that

it's only outputting 100 amps at 24

volts

so

it's convenient for boaters that don't

need to be plugged in all the time and

what they do is their inverter will draw

more power

and maybe more than shore power can give

them through the battery charger but

it's okay because if it's only for a

short period of time the battery charger

can pick up

it's going to catch up over time it's

going to bring the battery bank back to

full now of course if you're running a

continuous load that exceeds and far

exceeds your charging ability

then you're going to have a time limit

and that time limit is going to be the

function of your battery bank size

so it's a little tricky but we've done

these sort of setups and it's a good

compromise

so that you don't have to completely

rewire a boat to north american

standards while not having to install a

device that allows you to change both

frequency and voltage on your boat so

common problem as boats move around from

one side of the ocean to the other

but there's various solutions and if

you're curious we've written whole

articles about this go on our website

search it out

and we've got a lot of other tech talks

about this very topic if you haven't

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