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[Music] you [Music] the problem with electrical is not so much an electrical is unreliable is that an operator will forget and leaving a battery switch on all defeats the purpose of a battery switch okay if you have a battery switch and you put all your battery switches on all you've defeated the whole purpose of having battery banks having multiple batteries multiple output Chargers all this thing you're saying you know what when I go to war we put everyone on the line no reserves no nothing no backup I put everything on read 44 every time the whole house and that might look like more is better but I can tell you that once you drain all your batteries and your engine battery in your house battery or drain to nothing and you go start your engine whoever's on the boat with you will not share your enthusiasm for not being able to start the boat when you want to leave and that will diminish your interest or other people's interest in a boating when the boat doesn't start and you're stuck because on the boat you're not always having the luxury of leaving when you want sometimes you have to go now you can't wait and these devices make it easy for us as boaters to share power to other battery bags alright so we talked about charger we talked about alternators we talked about solar controllers we talked about fuel cells wanted to highlight DC generators we talked about we could have a wind turbine there we could also have a toter bine but now we're gonna be talking about combiners and notice it's a bi-directional device and we'll talk about a battery isolator so battery combiners what are they they're a CRS automatic combiner relay that's what blue C's calls them we have voltage sense relays that's what BP calls I mean these are all just marketing names right zan tracks calls it echo charge doesn't matter it's all one were multiple different words to say the same thing it's a way of sharing voltage automatically between one battery bank to another so here you see and this is very interesting you've got an unwritten known as that on switch distribution which could be the battery post if you only had one of them but because we like modular and doing things right we put an on switch distribution right here you've got a fuel cell going in there maybe an inverter charger or solar controller it could be even a DC generator and how are you gonna have those devices going to your house battery or an alternator you're going to your engine battery sharing the charge with either side right because they're connected to only one device now some battery chargers have multiple outputs but an inverter charger the new ones don't have multiple outputs they just have one output that's it it's whatever's connected the battery is what its gonna get in charge so here we have and it all that could charge the house this could connect the engine battery how do you have when you get a charge on your engine battery send it to the house or vice versa well a battery combiner does that for you and what's nice about it is it's going to combine your batteries at a certain voltage you can buy them for different voltages but let's assume 12 volts for most of us 13.3 is times of plenty I am always thinking about how very rich people can be generous Bill Gates giving 40 some billion dollars to charity still has 110 it's easy it's easy to be generous when times are good battery combiners are the same way they're saying you know what I will share my charged voltage with another battery but only do so when I'm getting a charging voltage meaning I got all the food on my table sure you can have some food but when times are hard and there's not a lot of food on the table there's no charge whole thing voltage is gonna say you know what I'm gonna disconnect the two battery banks and now the engine battery in the house battery or each on its own so that if you disconnect your house battery your engine battery still has a charging good high charge voltage and this effectively takes out the operator the boater yourself from actually turning the battery switch from you know one both to you don't have to touch that switch anymore that's which is now the charging the paralleling of your batteries is done in the background without your involvement I have never ever seen one of those devices fail I have literally installed our outfit has installed over thousands and I have never never seen a failure of any kind on a battery combiner so anybody that says aw well they're gonna be unreliable no black and white I mean no they're awesome and that device is about I don't know 120 bucks depends Canadian right maybe 100 u.s. something like that it's awesome awesome and it's this big it's tiny you buy them for the average that you're gonna put out right you can buy them big amperage small amperage bigger the amperage bigger the cost they also now have the ability think about what's really comment on some boats a parallel switch right like or a remote solenoid on the - you know even some sailboats you know for convenience right at the starting you're like my batteries won't start I'm gonna hold a momentary button to put my two batteries in parallel that those devices some of them will actually have the ability to put your batteries in parallel permanently like if you want as well like not only does it do it automatically like I'm working on a big boat right now like 100 footer and we're actually replacing the manual switch down in the engine room which on a big boat sounds like easy but you got to go down levels to get to it and we're actually gonna have it wired remotely so they can actually put their battery banks in parallel from any bridge on the boat okay great device highly recommend it they all have different marketing names but basically they're their combiners their solenoids if you want to think about on all boats you hear that clicking sound you don't hear a clicking sound with these but that kind of solenoid that actually like a starter starter has a solenoid on it right how do you put two things in parallel for a period of time this does it for a period of time as long as the chargeable things you charge voltage is there you really want to see that's the more expensive version right here you want to make sure obviously that you fuse a little bit like the charger you're not gonna have a hundred and 25 amp you want to make sure that you fuse four appropriately on both sides of the circuit so you don't have nuisance tripping very important all charging voltages have to be unswept I'm not going to go into why but I can promise you that if you want pain on your boat and you want magic do it on the switch side and then your boat is going to be mysterious and magical if you don't want mystery and magic do it on the N switch side it's up to you and the other implication about battery combiners and a limitation is that sometimes if the battery banks are too uneven and you've got a large battery bank and a small battery bank you might have this thing coming on and off as soon as it in parallel the voltage drops too much and then they disconnect they come back up again and you'll have the solenoid constantly clicking not literally but it could be on and off so it's important that you size that device for battery banks that are similar in size or there's a large alternator rule number one nothing is ever easy so it looks magical in some ways but there are certain implications of putting a device like that okay I've seen problems in the real world where it's not for every application so notice on switch distribution all charging voltages have to go to an uncertain black and white no exception period question is my house bank is down at 12.1 and my engine battery probably around 12.30 but she only gets used for 15 seconds and so when that thing kicked in all of a sudden correct good question we're talking about either battery banks that are at much uneven levels or we're probably your house bank is much bigger right that's going to be a problem the next slide is going to talk about a truly magnificent device we know each other so yeah it does so it looks bad but it's not bad no platica when she's here today okay it has its application you know you've got a Grady white a Boston Whaler a sailboat with - like my boat originally - four DS perfect similar size battery banks you own your alternators really good size as a function of the battery bank size good application but like I said rule number one nothing is easy you got to consider what are the implications of a battery combiner okay it works but notice it's also bi-directional right so we can go from here to there or there to there and then sometimes there's situations where if the battery banks are too big or you're putting it on a thruster and then one battery is weak the fuses blow and then you don't know it my life is full of horror stories that's all I hear right that's that's what people text me in the middle of the night on Saturday afternoon Sunday morning like the problems never end so I could that's how I know this stuff it's not because I'm insightful it's because I get the text messages all the time about things not working and they were like well how is that possible and then you figure it out you're like oh right yeah we you know that's makes sense and then there's a solution so there's a device for that but it's not the perfect device it has its place any other questions on battery combiners no you would never put your switch on both ever you'd leave it on one or on two never both that's right but if you put it on both you're forcing it on both all the time so this device becomes redundant yeah yeah but thrusters are complicated because Slusser banks thruster load could be four five six hundred apps you have that type of load for example we had a boater battery bank the operator was using the thruster enthusiastically and I say I'm not a sales guy right that is code for overuse of a thruster battery bank goes down like crazy so now the pool is empty there's nothing like some people are doing one battery bank for it and after us or a same time for 30 seconds like this is not a hybrid propulsion system right this is a thruster it's supposed to touch and go like touch stop okay chaos whatever it happens it's the end of the world you're moving your boat with thrusters you know what I got it now the battery bag goes down completely there's an ACR that's combined with that battery bank because the engine is on and the alternator is working but if your battery bank is completely empty have you ever thought about connecting putting yourself in between a dam a high point and a low point what's happening in the flow that's what's happening with hydroelectricity right I mean that's what it is there's a term I on the bottom there like you got 200 feet on one side you got zero on the other that turbine is gonna move the bigger the difference between the two sides of water though faster that turbine is gonna go well if you've got an empty battery bank and a full battery bank the rate that's going to go through that pipe is going to be more than the alternate route puts more than your inverter outputs more than you could ever think as possible and I've seen applications where that combiner is now pulling not pulling it's going through it 400 500 amps well it doesn't do that why because we put switch battery fuses the fuses blow unrelated my battery get her charge well it's because you know so it's a domino effect right so that's why battery combiners are not the perfect solution for everything but they're very useful we put lots in boat slots there's eighty percent of the time it's great