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  hi everyone jeff cote here with   votingtechtalk.com   a pleasure to have you all here and   listening in to a fellow voter's   question kyle asks   that's why i got my reading lesson   i have a separate  volt battery bank   for my bio thruster i know that it gets   charged on shore power because when i   leave the dock it works   okay   however i was an anchor for quite a few   days and when i used the thruster it   worked and then stopped   someone said that it may be it may not   be charged by the generator how would i   check this   oh kyle i love this question first of   all good on you for being curious   you know curiosity is everything in life   because it provides us answers right and   answers pro take the   mystery out of many things away that's   great   you're right by the way for many of you   that have a valve thruster in your boat   that valve thruster most likely was a   add-on   either at the factory as an option and   or   after the boat was sold by a dealer or a   boatyard   and the reality is that it's probably   not as integrated as you would think   electrically speaking   okay so that's the first thing come to   that realization is that bow thrusters   are generally   not something that's a standard piece of   equipment on many boats and since it's   not a standard piece of equipment it   doesn't get the same level of attention   and detail that many other pieces of   your boat would get like an ac panel or   dc panel   that's going to have somebody with   pretty deep knowledge   signing off on the design right it's   reality they just have to it's too much   liability it's too important but the bow   thruster is an afterthought or a stern   thruster and so a lot of those things   electrically are not done maybe the way   that   you and perhaps   myself would do it so generally the   battery charger   bow thrusters are either   it could   be whatever voltage and they're   generally far away from battery banks so   what commonly happens which is in the   case of kyle which that is normally the   easiest solution   is the boat builder or a dealer will   install a small battery charger directly   beside the battery bank or the thruster   and they're going to plug in an ac   outlet   that might be designated as battery   mount thruster charger or it might be   simply designated as   it might be connected on another circuit   related to   outlets in the forward cabin   right so not every one of those circuits   is actually labeled on the ac panel   although i think there's an argument for   why it should certainly be able to know   what breaker is   uh but not always but it should   it all too often and this is definitely   the case   especially when the voltages are   different between  and . if your   house is at  and your thrusters at    very few of those battery banks will get   a charge   from the alternators right so the engine   the engines might be outputting via the   alternators  volts   uh and so then you would need different   devices to convert the voltage to    right you would need a dc to dc uh   charging converter and they exist   but most people and those are relatively   new so most of us won't have that device   on board and if you do congrats you're   one of the lucky ones   if the battery voltages are the same um   then yeah it's possible that you're   going to have battery combiners but   battery combiners   on thruster banks can be problematic   because of unexpected high current   over the link the parallel link when the   batteries are heavily discharged or   under use   and that might cause   fuses to blow unexpectedly or to trip   effectively   negating the parallel link and many of   us won't know this until we realize that   our thruster battery is simply dead it   never gets a charge anymore because the   battery combiner and the fuse associated   with the battery combiner fail and that   happens a lot   like   all the time   which brings me to my next point before   the final point   if you're installing a bath thruster on   your boat   or you have a bowel thruster on your   boat i highly suggest   that you install and have the bow   thruster battery on a volt meter   somewhere on your dash or even in the   forward cabin installed somewhere in the   ability to monitor the voltage of that   battery   and all too often i've seen people that   don't monitor the voltage of that   battery bank and end up with a dead   battery bank because there's just no   other way for that battery bank to   communicate with the owner that it's in   trouble   and that would be probably  to  of   all of us that have bought thrusters do   not have a battery voltage of that   battery we're just hoping that the   battery's there and we're just hoping   that it gets charged   and as we know hope has very little   place on a boat   especially when we can prepare and avoid   the need for hope   and the last question uh that kyle asked   is well if it works on shore power how   do i know that it's not working on   generator   now that's where it gets really weird   um generally an ac system   has   generator and short being   two options to power the ac panel right   generally the whole boat can be powered   through shore or the whole   to shore or generate and you really   don't have the ability of saying oh the   generator only powers certain loads but   not all loads on the boat that's all i   don't think i've ever seen that possible   you could do it that way but i've never   seen that generally the generator and   shore are source a or b and both sources   can power the whole boat so you would   expect   to have either the generator short now   why would running the generator not   recharge the battery well it's possible   that your battery charger is tiny it's   really possible   under size very likely because when   you're connected short power you have   eons of time to recharge it but when   you're on the generator you might be   only running the generated hour a day   two hours a day   and if your thruster is used a lot that   might be not enough to recharge it   and so i would make sure that you know   that might be one of the challenges not   so much that your generator doesn't run   your battery charger is that maybe your   battery charger needs to run for its   current size longer   or alternatively you should look at   what's considered dc dc charging   converter so that when your alternators   are running right i.e when there's a   charging voltage on your engine   batteries that excess power from those   batteries that are receiving a charging   voltage from your engines send that   excess power to your thruster battery   bank even though they're  you could   still get them at . and that would be   my suggestion kyle so great question and   thanks for all of you for listening 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 uh tech   talks about this very topic if you   haven't subscribed to this channel   please do   um it actually it really does make a   difference it encourages us to keep   posting so if you're watching this video   and haven't had a chance to subscribe   we really do care because the more of   you that are watching the more of us   over here are willing to spend more time   in creating content so thanks again