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all right a common question I get all  the time from owners like yourself is  Jeff I've got a battery switch it's got  an it's a source selector off one two  both and I also have what you show me  down below which is an automatic  combiner relay or an alternative to that  would be because that's just a marketing  name a VSR which is a voltage sense  relay and why would i have both on my  boat like why would i have a voltage  sense relay or an ACR when I have a  source selector that gives me the  ability to go both the difference  between the two is that an AC r vs r is  effectively a digital solenoid that puts  your batteries in parallel whenever  there's a charging voltage and also  disconnects them automatically whenever  there isn't a charging voltage and why  that's essential for a boat owner is  that over time people will yes when the  engine is running will remember to turn  the switch to both while the engine is  running but what's going to happen is  there might be this occasion where you  forget to go back to either one or two  and then what happens is you're at a  tanker you're using your fridge you're  using your appliances you might be there  for two three days and now you go to  start the engine and what you did is you  actually drain both the engine battery  and the house battery so now both of  your both bags have been brought down to  50 percent and you go to start the  engine and maybe it's cold maybe the  engine battery need to be a hundred  percent to start the engine you go to  start it but you don't have a backup and  so that's what's really nice about an AC  Rav SR is it allows the an owner to  actually have the batteries be put in  parallel whenever there's a charging  voltage automatically without their  involvement and also to have them  disconnected with other involvement so  we end up putting hundreds and hundreds  of these AC AR s and V s RS on boats as  a way to provide automation for the  owner the source selector switch is then  used more for ways to manually put the  batteries in parallel right on all or  both whenever you want to charge the  engine or run the engine and your engine  battery is weak so it's something that  you would do on rarely as opposed to  every time you run the engine  you  another question that a lot of boater  asks themselves is Jeff okay I've got  here I've got a source selector switch  and I've got a source selector where one  is house to his engine I'm on an anchor  I've enjoyed I've been there for two  days I'm on one should I start the  engine on my house battery or should  start my engine or start my engine on  the engine battery the dedicated engine  battery trees on - yes of course you  could start the engine off battery one  but it's a little bit you want to  confirm every time you start the engine  you want to confirm that your engine  battery can do it by itself now with the  help of the house but you want the  engine battery on its own to prove to  you every time you start your engine  that it can do it without hassle without  any hiccup without any difficulty  because what that gives you is it gives  you confidence that you have a good  engine battery because an engine battery  is relatively inexpensive to change and  you want to go out you want to know  every time you go out that when you're  gonna actually want to come back home  you're gonna be able to start that  engine with our problem and that's why I  always emphasize to owners to never have  the battery switch on both to start an  engine it's like walking around with a  cane yeah sure you could do it but  wouldn't it be nice to know when you are  limping as opposed to have a crutch  right there ready to take your weight  all the time and then then who you're  gonna call when you need more help with  you're always starting on both and  something doesn't work well what's your  backup you're always using your backup  and so it's essential to keep separation  of an engine and a house battery so that  you always know if you started having a  weak battery you know that you need to  either resolve it yourself or call  someone to help you resolve this problem  one of the most common things that we  recommend boat owners to have especially  if you're gonna actually use your  batteries in a deep-cycle application  and meaning you're gonna actually leave  the dock stay one night overnight or  maybe multiple nights or go on a cruise  for an extended period of time when  you're actually using your batteries and  cycling them is to install what's called  a battery monitor and a battery monitor  is essentially a fuel gauge for your  batteries and also a speedometer for  your batteries fuel gauge means it tells  you the depth of discharge of your  batteries and tells you in a percentage  are your batteries are 100% or they had  eighty percent or they have twenty  percent and so it gives you in a  percentage what is the capacity of  it's very similar to what a fuel gauge  would do in a fraction 1/2 tank quarter  tank full tank which is nice and also a  speedometer tells you how fast you  either charging the batteries or are you  depleting them and the rate at which you  deplete your batteries is essential  because that tells you if you're  actually left a load that you shouldn't  of or maybe you start managing your load  so that you're gonna start conserving  power so that you can stay in an  anchorage for longer and so when you our  batteries are a little bit like money  you you know it's one of those things  that you rarely have enough of and you  want to actually conserve and so by  knowing the rate at which you burn power  right the apps coming in and out you're  gonna be able to start maybe changing  your behavior and start basically  conserving power and saying well do I  really need all these lights on should I  leave the chartplotter on when I'm at  anchor and I'm not using it what are  things that you can turn on and off so  that you start conserving power so your  battery banks whatever you have last few  longer and on this boat we've got  actually one of our one of our most  popular battery monitors you can see  it's over here it's actually a victor on  battery monitor now what that device  shows you right now is actually it shows  us the voltage so if I choose the up and  down arrow here right now what we're  seeing is we're seeing a voltage of  thirteen point nine eight and that is  actually at the house battery if you go  down and we select we're actually seeing  right now what that means is we're  actually thirteen point nine eight is a  float charge and we're actually seeing  right now 0.15 amps going into the  batteries so that's effectively a float  current two watts is another way to look  at it it's amps and watts instead at the  voltage and here we've got a power so  what that tells us is the battery you've  got a little indicator over here that  tells you the battery is completely full  and with batteries zero means full and  negative is actually you're always  thinking about a little bit like a line  of credit you know if you've got a line  of credit of you know maybe $500 or  $1,000 if you've got no dollars in your  bank account you're gonna start with  zero and you can go all the way to minus  1000 or minus 500 a battery modern looks  at the same thing battery capacity is  always in the negative  here's the other value here what we're  seeing is that at zero amp hours you  have a hundred percent of usable battery  capacity this this here is infinity and  it's not so relevant for boat owners  because the current draw on a house  battery fluctuates a lot throughout a  day and this is actually predicting how  long are your battery's gonna last based  on the last four minutes or 32 minutes  or 16 minutes and since loads coming off  irregularly it's like a little bit like  driving a car in the city and saying oh  right now in the city I'm doing 30  kilometers an hour therefore if I drive  in the city for the next two hours I'm  gonna have covered 60 commerce the  problem is your speed in the city varies  continuously and so does your amps on a  boat you know suddenly the water pump  comes on comes off and so you're gonna  find yourself where you might have the  water pump come on it's 15 amps the  fridge turns on another five a light  gets on the light comes off all those  loans are coming on and off and it's  really like driving a car in the city  you look at the speed in the city the  speed is constantly doing that and it's  really hard to take that speed and say  over the last 30 minutes my average  speed is 40 plus 8 kilometers an hour or  40 amps and therefore my batteries are  only gonna last this amount of time so  time prediction on a battery monitor is  really hard but what isn't hard is  knowing where you are at at any given  moment  ie your fuel gauge in a percentage or  knowing the speed at which you're using  power at any given time and over over a  period of time while you're looking at  your battery monitor you're gonna be  able to start sussing out or assessing  oh is this normal I'm you know about to  call it for the night I'm looking I only  see 3 amps or I'm going to call it and I  see 20 amps what's on why do I have 20 M  drawn my vote what did I leave on did I  leave the radar on on the chart plotter  are there lights on that I don't know  did I leave my running lights on is my  anchor light on or off or maybe you're  going to bed and it's a draw of zero and  you're like well where's my anchor light  my anchor light is incandescent and it  should be drawing two amps so it starts  you start getting a feel for it because  you've got a feedback and it allows  owners to start managing their power on  their boat better  Jeff how much power am I using on my  boat  what's my daily amp our budget and also  do I have the right batteries for that  and also how am I gonna recharge how am  I gonna meet my daily demand so with a  battery monitor you can start figuring  out because then you've got a history  right you can see over time  oh I started to left from 9:00 a.m. to  9:00 a.m. after for 24 hours I use today  125 amp hours next day I use 137 next  day I use 105 and over time you're gonna  start having an average and that average  is going to tell you depending on the  season and it should change on the  season because our power consumption  changes depending if it's a shoulder  season winter or summer what is your  average amp hours and you've got to  consider what are the big loads on a  boat the biggest load on a boat pretty  much up to 70 or 80 feet is  refrigeration refrigeration is  proportionally always the largest loan  on a boat because as the boat gets  bigger and bigger there's simply more  and more fridges and so what this  latitude here with the type of  compressors we have fridges Jeremy run  at a half duty cycle meaning if you've  got a fridge that runs at five amp draw  five amps for 24 hours times 0.5 so  that's five times 24 you call that 120  and divided by two so that's a 60 amp  hour load just for that now for you it  for example on this boat you have a  water maker the water maker draws 26  amps let's say you run it for two hours  that's two hours at twenty six amps  that's 52 amp hours plus the 60 for the  fridge you had 112 amp hours just to  start off with plus then some water  pumps a little bit of lights and maybe a  little bit of the inverter a little bit  of an instrument a little bit of a VHF  radio and so then you can find yourself  you know maybe having on the days you  using the water maker maybe you're using  a hundred and fifty amp hours a day the  days of your aren't maybe you're using a  hundred so now you've got a range you  know is it a hundred to 150 amp hours a  day at 12 volts the next question is  okay so we've got a battery bank and on  this boat we've got a battery bank  that's for golf cart batteries great  both battery two sets of batteries are  wired in series and then put in parallel  marketing would say maybe it's more than  400 amp hours but I would say let's pull  back let's  just call it 400 amp hours so 400 amp  hours where you don't want to bring the  battery because they're flooded less  than 50% you bring that down 50 percent  of 400 it's 200 amp hours but we also  know that a bulk charging the top-end  takes forever and so now you're looking  at from 85 to 100 it's not really usable  so effectively on this boat you would  have from 50 to 85 it's really kind of  your theoretical range and so that gives  you a third of four hundred which is  around 135 amp hours which seems to be  what you're using on this boat every day  so this battery bank would be properly  sized for pretty much a day a day and a  half of typical use now what gets  interesting is on this boat there's  actually solar so on this boat there's  actually an array on top of the Bimini  and array on top of the Dodger there's  300 watts on top of the Bimini and 80  watts on top of the Dodger so that gives  us 380 watts we've been promoting and  encouraging owners to consider solar for  over five years now and on my boat I've  done it as well and we probably have  over 250 installs and on these installs  well we've noticed and I have a lot of  our clients that are kind of a little  bit geeky like me that are tracking  their daily outputs of solar what we've  noticed is for owners that are using  solar here like in the Pacific Northwest  you know from Puget Sound all the way to  desolation sound not Alaska because God  knows what's gonna happen to the weather  you might not see the Sun for a whole  summer up there you might but you might  not staying in this kind of vicinity of  the Pacific Northwest you're looking at  a ratio between watts and amp hours is a  factor of four and yes I know there's a  long formula but luckily there's a  shorthand and the shorthand is if you've  got a hundred watt panel in this  latitude in the summer from May to end  of August you're looking at a hundred  divided by four is going to give you a  half hours so on this boat you've got  388 Watts 380 watts divided by four is  gonna be just a little bit shy of I know  it sounds like ninety five ninety five  amp hours a day so on this boat assuming  the solar panels are good quality that  the controllers are MPPT controllers  that the wiring is actually  doesn't cause a lot of voltage drop  you're gonna get about 95 amp hours a  day of output from those solar panels  and that's not the best output if it's  beautiful sunny blue sky you're gonna  get maybe probably divided by three so  you would get 380 divided by three and  if things aren't going so well it might  be 380 divided by five so your range is  really between divided by three if  you're optimistic and things are  gorgeous blue skies too pretty cloudy  not end-of-the-world cloudy but pretty  cloudy is divided by five on average  it's 4 so on this boat with 95 amp hours  a day of solar you're pretty close if  you're running the water maker maybe  only for one hour and you're running out  of those loads you might find yourself  on this boat to be able to have maybe a  hundred a power budget a day and so in  right now in 95 you're pretty much close