View Transcript

Hide Transcript

Transcript is auto-generated.

hi everyone Jeff Cote here with another question from a boater uh asking about how to go about traveling internationally with a different voltages and different frequencies aboard a sailboat but this could apply also to small strollers you know there are trawlers out there 40 45 maybe that are going to do long distance passage making but certainly Sailors that are smaller in size are going to be doing that how do you go about doing that well that's a problem that happens with a lot of European boats coming to North America or North American boats going to Europe it gets worse right because ultimately if you're moving around and you're truly sailing to different ports you're going to have to have a setup that allows you to connect to various types of docks or Shore Power Systems um and without your boat having to change as you get from one destination to the other typically good way to do that is to have all your Shore power connection uh basically be through a battery charger an inverter combo so what that would mean is the good news is the battery charger can have a high range of input voltages generally it's going to be 100 to 240 or even 220 and they're going to also have a high range also for frequency meaning they're going to take 50 hertz and 60 hertz 50 hertz is common in Europe 60 hertz common in North America and it varies throughout the world and so you're going to have basically your Shore power setup um going to a battery charger the battery charger is going to basically recharge the batteries but it will also in some ways offset your AC loads that are powered through your inverter all of your AC loads are going to be powered through your inverter and the inverter is going to take its power for the battery bank and the battery bank is going to get recharged from the shore power now Norm obviously there's some limitations um you know you're going through two conversions so it's not a very efficient way of getting AC to your boat but it's a universal way to get AC to your boat all our loads on boats are going to be either wired pretty much battery charger is a good exception and battery chargers for laptops are another one and phones and stuff like that but pretty much all of them are gonna basically either be set up with 50 hertz or 60 hertz and that's a pretty specific frequency that you've got to buy to in terms of an input voltage so what you do as a way to bypass that is simply have one device the battery charger that basically Powers all or offsets all the inverter loads by just sort but you're gonna need a big battery charger that's probably going to be 100 amp 12 volts or even sometimes you're going to have two of them or three of them it all really depends on what is your continuous AC loads or overall loads for the boat you need to make sure that your battery charger when you're connected to shore power can offset all of that it doesn't mean that the good news is with a battery charger and a battery the battery can sustain more loads than are coming in natural early but only for a sustained period of time because eventually you're going to run out of batteries so you can ride the Peaks by using your battery bank but eventually you're going to need to have less power consumption than you have available or less than you have available so that you can offset that and recharge your battery Bank to be ready for the other Peak and that's a way of and we've written articles about this on our website if you feel like geeking out more about this topic it's a real thing many Builders are encountering it especially as we leave one type of electrical grid for another so great question and thanks for asking and for all of you out there safe boating and thanks for watching our Channel much appreciated 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)