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Jeff Cote here with boatingtechtalk.com we've got a question from a fellow boater that has a 48 volt battery bank for propulsion and this motor asks and says Jeff how do I go about and here are the questions related to this sort of struggle what do I do with my battery Banks should I make them all 48 volts and then convert to 12 for some devices  should I have 48 Volts for propulsion and 12 volt for house do I have anything 12 volts and then convert to 48 basically yeah that's the big dilemma and this happens to not just boaters that have 48 volts but borders that have 24 volt house and 12 volt for starters it's about what do you do when you have different voltages now four boats that are considering an electric propulsion what we've seen done is to have the 48 volt to have basically at least two Banks you're going to have a 48 volt bank for your propulsion and then we're going to have a 12 volt or 24 volt depending on what's what your house loads are to run off a separate battery Bank I'm always a little hesitant and it's not to say it's wrong but I'm always a little bit hesitant and having only one battery Bank on a boat having only a 48 volt battery Bank let's say on the boat and then having a DC to DC converter that runs all your house loads off only a converter I don't know that that one for me is a little hard seeing that sometimes we do see battery problems and to have only one battery Bank on your boat especially if you're using it for propulsion I I'm leaning towards more installing two battery Banks one for propulsion and one for house now the Dilemma at this point is like okay well great Jeff now I've got two battery banks on my boat how am I gonna charge I what am I doing for solar is the solar going to the house is solar going to my propulsion Bank I've got power in my propulsion Bank how do I get power into my house Bank I'm recharging and so yeah so what I would do is I would limit everything on the 48 volt Bank to be propulsion and then I would have all my house loads including inverter charger including everything else that is related to house water pumps navigation system all that be connected to a 12 or 24 volt Bank and how I would solve conversion issues um is depending on what you want to do with your solar array the question is where are you going to be recharging this but if you're going to be recharging this boat with solar or Shore power then you could you're going to have to choose are your solar array going to recharge your house or is your solar array going to recharge your 48 volt for propulsion that's a choice depends again and then the question is well how do you get from One bank to the other and you could do that via DC to DC charging converters so it's possible for you to get devices that would bring from one voltage to the other again It's Tricky it really is tricky when's a good time to share so a lot of Boulders and we've seen that too will actually have maybe some solar going to the 12 volt some solar going to the 40 volt 48 volts and they're going to try to keep them separate they might bring them together via the GC to DC charging converters but they might try to keep it separate it's complicated it's never easy and it's always messy it's sort of like half a dozen a one half a dozen of the other so it's a good question from the boulder but it's I think there's more questions that need to be answered in terms of usage right how are you going to use your boat is your propulsion going to be just day trips are you going to be going on your electric propulsion for long periods of time and then not being able to recharge not having Shore power waiting for the sun to recharge your bank and then going again so depending on your usage of the boat and what you do with it as opposed to being a Day Tripper or are you going for weeks at a time or are you sailing most of the time and propulsion is just to do sort of like near shore just getting into an Anchorage getting out those questions are gonna maybe filter down all the choices and will enable you as a border to say okay now that I know what I'm going to do with my propulsion bank then that's going to really influence what I want to do with my house battery Bank ultimately I believe in redundancy and I would suggest to have two separate Banks it would be my advice to this voter and find a way to recharge them that is realistic and based on what you're going to be doing with that boat so it's hard having different voltages is not easy and especially when you go to 48 because not all DC devices are going to be able to run on 48 Volts for sure electric propulsion might be tailored to it but you know finding a water pump that works off already volts or a navigation system is not going to happen so if you do have only one battery Bank a 48 volt battery bank then you might end up having to run things through converters so hence why I always recommend to have different battery banks for different usage and if one fails then you can at least have your comms which is a VHF or at least have a chart plotter know where you are and then you don't lose everything so good question thanks for asking and if you've got inputs and how you solve this problem on your boat with electric polishing please put your comments below because sharing is caring thanks for watching so if you're curious again go on our website and find out more answers and solutions with this sort of setup and thanks for asking and thanks for all of you for listening and tuning in English (auto-generated)