Electrical Upgrades ...... Wish Me Luck!

[Karizma]

Following our winter maintenance upgrades (posted elsewhere on here), I’ve been researching options to improve / upgrade the wiring systems on Karizma.

After spending many hours watching youtube videos, mainly from Pacific Yacht Systems (check them out for all things electrical) I realised that Karizma’s wiring was less than perfect after having 4 previous owners, all doing their own ‘upgrades’.

So, over the past year or so me and Mrs Karizma have spent many an hour in the bottom of the boat, drawing out the current wiring setup; trying to understand how things currently work and what’s where. Let me tell you, this has been very educational and everyone should have a go if you like 'tech stuff'.

As always, I can’t do these things in halves, and therefore when I decide to do something I’m ‘all in’, so this is either going to be a great success, or …….. I’ll be paying for a marine sparky to work out what I’ve done wrong!!!

The key improvements I’m wanting are:

-    all the wiring circuits to be protected by appropriate fuses (remembering the fuses are there to protect the wire not the device it's feeding)
-    replace all the Garland fuses with 'blade type' fuses on all the DC distribution circuits (they are easier to purchase and cheaper!)
-    remove most of the connections going directly to the batteries (there’s lots!) and move them to fused distribution boards (both switched and un-switched, as applicable)
-    a better understanding of the ‘state of the batteries’ by introducing a smart shunt, and ‘smart charging’ to the house bank through DC-DC chargers and an MPPT solar controller

I'll use this post to document progress and ask any questions I might have along the way. So here goes ........

First the simply 'jobs', installing a DC disconnect switch on the feed from the solar panel so I can have the ability to isolate it when needed and replace the old PWM controller with a new bluetooth enabled MPPT controller.

 

 

 

 

Then replace the old Guest galvanic isolator (which must be as old as the boat and I'm unsure if it still works or not), for an up-to-date Victron GI, making sure its wired up correctly with it sat in-between the earth from shore power and the rest of the boats earth connections.

 

 

 

 

[BroadAmbition]

I wish you all the luck possible and look forward to your write up and photo's

Upgrading / replacing / re-wring an original system is always difficult and proper time consuming.#

It is often easier to rip the lot out and start again which is what we did with 'B.A' during her restoration.  Brand new 12v and 240v - systems - the lot.  We still made one huge fooparr  - didn't take notes or make any drawings       - Huge error.  Any maintenance or upgrades now have to be done by memory and none of us are much good at that nowadays.  There is only me and Bro' that really understand the systems

Griff

[Karizma]

1 hour ago, BroadAmbition said:

I wish you all the luck possible and look forward to your write up and photo's

Upgrading / replacing / re-wring an original system is always difficult and proper time consuming.#

It is often easier to rip the lot out and start again which is what we did with 'B.A' during her restoration.  Brand new 12v and 240v - systems - the lot.  We still made one huge fooparr  - didn't take notes or make any drawings       - Huge error.  Any maintenance or upgrades now have to be done by memory and none of us are much good at that nowadays.  There is only me and Bro' that really understand the systems

Griff

Thanks Griff.

Good to know I've at least started well, with a 'current' wiring diagram (after many months of tracing wires) and now have started creating an 'upgraded' version that I'm sure will get modified as we progress!

[grendel]

I once had the unenviable task of going into a live grid substation, and updating the drawings to what was there- 30 years of wiring upgrades, none of which were recorded, made more difficult because though the wires had numbers on ferrules around the cable, these were often rotated out of sight, and being live i wasnt allowed to touch them to rotate the ferrules back. anyway 3 weeks on site with a drawing board and the old drawings to mark up and I eventually got it done- many thousands of wires.

[Karizma]

Next task is to disconnect all the batteries and remove the 2 house banks (1 bank of 2 batteries supplying the inverter & 1 bank of 2 supplying all the domestic circuits) - it does look a mess down there!

This would then allow me to start removing 2 old 'diode type' Battery Isolators which are apparently very inefficient compared to the new Argofet ones (though I won't be replacing them going forward in the new wiring design)

And 3 Battery Combiners (2 Victron Energy Cyrix 12/24v 100 amp & 1 Nagares 12v 100 amp), which again won't be needed in the new design.

 

I get the feeling this is the point of 'No Return' !!!!!

[annv]

Hi Karizma it's good practice to grease all electrical terminals, if you dont have the correct grease (dont use ordinary grease) use Vaseline. this is the best way to connect your battery's. see diagram. John

[Karizma]

35 minutes ago, annv said:

Hi Karizma it's good practice to grease all electrical terminals, if you dont have the correct grease (dont use ordinary grease) use Vaseline. this is the best way to connect your battery's. see diagram. John

Thanks John. I did buy some dialectric silicone grease ages ago but haven't used it yet as I was concerned it might get a bit 'messy' over time with dirt sticking to it? - Though the battery boxes do have lids on them to protect the batteries / terminals.

I've already started making up the new battery cables (70mm² cables with new 8mm hoe dia terminals) all of equal length as per your 'suitable for most applications' diagram, for the 4x110Ah Victron Energy AGM Dual Purpose batteries that are going in - should be enough domestic power going forward (hopefully!)

Steve

[dom]

22 minutes ago, Karizma said:

4x110Ah Victron Energy AGM Dual Purpose batteries that are going in - should be enough domestic power going forward (hopefully!)

Just be careful to ensure that you're getting sufficient charge voltage for AGM. I'm not a massive fan of AGM, as people often dump them straight in place of regular lead acids without addressing the charge voltage issue, which invariably leads to worse performance, or premature battery failure. Alternators, etc are generally set to max. 14.4v. This needs increasing to around 14.7v for AGM. Decent MPPTs and DC-DC chargers should cater for this, but you'll probably need to do something to set them up initially.

 

[Karizma]

Thanks Dom.

Yes you are right, and as you might have read in my initial post I'm wanting to better understand the 'condition' of my house bank by installing a shunt, and a smart profile charging system.

Interestingly enough my original setup also included a Adverc battery management device which seems to 'boost' the output of the alternators. I've currently disabled this until I've finished the upgrades, to decide if I remove it completely from the system as it seems really 'dated' technology now.

So now I've taken out the battery isolators and combiners, I plan to install 2 x 30amp Victron DC to DC smart chargers that will be fed by 2 x 55amp alternators coming off the Engine battery - so I'm hoping a maximum of 60amp (ish) being available directly to the AGMs, all supported by the dedicated charging profiles from the DC-DC chargers.

One things for sure, these AGMs aren't the cheapest, so I want to take care of them!

Thanks again for the insight.

Steve

[dom]

1 hour ago, Karizma said:

So now I've taken out the battery isolators and combiners, I plan to install 2 x 30amp Victron DC to DC smart chargers that will be fed by 2 x 55amp alternators coming off the Engine battery - so I'm hoping a maximum of 60amp (ish) being available directly to the AGMs, all supported by the dedicated charging profiles from the DC-DC chargers.

It's a real shame that Victron's DC-DC units only go up to 30A at the moment. I'm likely to end up going through a similar process in future and have spent hours researching and planning. I'm guessing you're now bought into the Victron ecosystem, so will want to stick with them, but I may well go with a couple of Renogy units, as they do a 50A unit - so 2 on a common bank can do 100A bulk charging (as long as you don't use the solar input, or isolate panels when engines are running).

Renogy are also starting to offer some nice shunts and monitors. All their stuff is often substantially cheaper than Victron and seems well received amongst the online community. I do like Victron's GX Touch though. I could very easily be swayed into spending too much on their other kit just to be able to use it!

I actually used to work for a company which, at the time, was one of the largest distributors of CTEK chargers. If you're just running a single bank of batteries, their D250S/Smartpass charger combination beats pretty much everything else on the market hands down from a technical perspective, but a) it's expensive and b) only really good for single banks.

 

 

[Karizma]

3 hours ago, dom said:

I'm likely to end up going through a similar process in future and have spent hours researching and planning.

I went through exactly the same process, which started about 18 months ago. Many hours watching different YouTube opinions on how you should wire a boat up and what equipment does what. 

The two YouTube channels that are my 'go to' channels have ended up being 'Pacific Yacht Systems' & 'Narrowboat Electrician' - a great source of info, when you know nothing about marine electrics - like me!

3 hours ago, dom said:

 I'm guessing you're now bought into the Victron ecosystem, so will want to stick with them .....

I do like Victron's GX Touch though. I could very easily be swayed into spending too much on their other kit just to be able to use it!

Yes I'm 'all in' now - No going back. And yes I'm really looking forward to the point when I get to link everything together with the Cerbo-s GX & the GX Touch screen

[dom]

24 minutes ago, Karizma said:

Yes I'm 'all in' now - No going back. And yes I'm really looking forward to the point when I get to link everything together with the Cerbo-s GX & the GX Touch screen

Definitely all in with the Multiplus. I have quite a bit of electrical experience, so I think I'm going to do things slightly differently and to try and avoid big invertors, adapting things to run natively from 12v and resorting to a generator if I need mains and can't access a hookup.

One thing I've heard is to be careful about heat and ventilation with the Victron DC-DC units. Apparently, they can get very hot and will start to throttle if not well ventilated.

[Karizma]

30 minutes ago, dom said:

One thing I've heard is to be careful about heat and ventilation with the Victron DC-DC units. Apparently, they can get very hot and will start to throttle if not well ventilated.

Yes I've heard that. I've even seen folks putting PC fans behind the heatsink to force cool them, to keep the performance up. Only time will tell.

[dom]

Keep us updated - it'll be interesting to see your progress.

[Karizma]

6 hours ago, dom said:

............ as long as you don't use the solar input, or isolate panels when engines are running.

Dom, just been reading this again and maybe don't understand the significance of this paragraph. Can you expand / explain please?

[dom]

18 minutes ago, Karizma said:

Dom, just been reading this again and maybe don't understand the significance of this paragraph. Can you expand / explain please?

It won't be any concern for you with the Victron kit you're using (as far as I'm aware).

Renogy do a 50A MPPT DC-DC unit with dual inputs. You can use it as a DC-DC charger, as a solar regulator, or as both at the same time. In dual input mode, it limits each input to 25A. With the engine running, if you've got 100w of solar connected, you'd only get around 33A in strong sun. If you disconnect the solar input when the engine is running, the unit pulls the full 50A from the alternator in the bulk charge phase.

 

[Karizma]

Before I started installing more new hardware, the Sterling inverter was the last thing to remove from the boat; this was still in good working order but I couldn't resist upgrading to a 1600 watt Pure Sine Wave inverter that complemented the rest of the new Victron hardware (the old one is a Quasi Sine Wave unit delivering 1500 watts).

This was a relatively easy task, though I did replace the positive and negative DC cabling with 50 mm² wire (as per the manufacturers instructions, as the inverter was less than 5m from the batteries) and also replaced the 240volt supply and distribution cabling with 2.5mm Blue Arctic cables.

I also made sure I earthed the inverter casing using a cable size one less than the DC cabling (which ended up being 40 mm²), which might be a little 'overkill' but my research uncovered that a guy called Nigel Calder (highly respected marine electrician) had done a lot of work to prove that 'if all went wrong' then the earth cable could in theory have to take a lot of amperage!

Now it was time to start putting things back.........

After the new inverter the next thing to install was the new Engine battery distribution boards (one switched and one un-switched). The Switched distribution circuit (using a Victron Energy Lynx Distributor) would be supplying the Engine, Bow thruster and Windlass, and the Un-switched distribution board (using a Victron Energy 250 amp 6-Way Mega Fuse Holder With Busbar) would be for the 2 Alternators, and the inputs to the two Orion-Tr Smart 12/12V-30A Non-Isolated DC-DC Chargers.

With space being a premium, we spent a lot of time trying to work out where everything was going to go, and where needed, plywood was used to produce new mounting surfaces.

For the first time, this would mean that every cable, from the Engine battery to the appliance(s) on these circuits were protected with an appropriate Mega fuse - one of my aims when I started this project.

Next would be to start on the Domestic circuits ...........

[Karizma]

One of the 'tricky' decisions that I had to make was how do I get dedicated profile charging to the new AGM batteries from 2 standard alternators? Wiring one of the alternators to the engine battery and then connecting one of the DC-DC chargers from that battery to the AGM's would be fine, but how do I connect the 2nd alternator to the AGMs when you aren't suppose to connect DC-DC chargers directly to alternators? Argofet battery isolators? Battery combiners? upgrading the regulators on the back of the alternators?

Researching the internet i found lots of examples from the automotive guys where they were adding 2nd alternators directly to their starter batteries to provide more charging capacity for supporting large sound systems.

Would this have the potential to 'over charge' the engine battery?

So after a lot of head scratching, I've decided to wire both 55amp alternators to the Engine battery (via an un-switched distribution board) and then wire the two 30amp DC-DC chargers from the engine battery to be the AGMs. This should provide up to a maximum of 60 amps to the domestic battery bank - it will be interesting to see what I do get.

Anybody got any thoughts on what they would do?

[FairTmiddlin]

1 hour ago, Karizma said:

One of the 'tricky' decisions that I had to make was how do I get dedicated profile charging to the new AGM batteries from 2 standard alternators?

Anybody got any thoughts on what they would do?

One of these should suffice

https://webshop.vetus.com/en/product/bs1503c-battery-splitter-150a

[dom]

Two alternators in parallel doesn't sit comfortably with me. I worked in automotive electronics for quite a lot of years, including around the car audio scene. I have photos kicking around somewhere of a US manufacturer's demo truck at Daytona Spring Break "Sound Off", with a big aluminium bulkhead and something like 8 or 10 alternators hanging off it. The thing you have to consider taking any tips from that scene is it's considered a success if you crack your own windscreen (or even your roof - I've seen it happen). Reliability is rarely considered, fires are not unheard of and hardware is often treated as consumable.

In theory, two alternators in parallel will work OK. The problem is, in practice, you'll probably end up with some disparity between the performance of the two. There's a risk that towards the end of the bulk phase, one alternator regulator may decide to stop charging whilst the other continues. You've then got two DC-DC units trying to pull 30A each from a single alternator - or possibly current flowing in an unintended manner from one alternator through the other (can't even being to think what effect that might have).

The other concern I'd have is that if your engine battery ever fails open circuit (or a cable becomes disconnected), you'll probably fry both alternators, rather than just one.

The only simple solution I can think of is to replicate the setup on a typical dual engine system. Connect each alternator to a standard lead acid battery - one for engine cranking, then use the second "spare" battery to run a single item, such as your fridge or water pump.

May be worth asking Victron their view, as you can't be the first to do this? They've probably got some ridiculously expensive bit of hardware to suit!

[dom]

3 hours ago, FairTmiddlin said:

One of these should suffice

https://webshop.vetus.com/en/product/bs1503c-battery-splitter-150a

Looks like that would probably be fine if you were directly dumping current straight into a bank of standard lead acids, but the situation is more complicated in this case. It's using AGM batteries, which need higher voltage and the DC-DC units might see a slightly lower input voltage due to the splitter.

[Karizma]

52 minutes ago, dom said:

There's a risk that towards the end of the bulk phase, one alternator regulator may decide to stop charging whilst the other continues. You've then got two DC-DC units trying to pull 30A each from a single alternator - or possibly current flowing in an unintended manner from one alternator through the other (can't even being to think what effect that might have).

Thanks for this Dom, I'll give that some thought wrt maybe monitoring what happens in practice.

54 minutes ago, dom said:

The other concern I'd have is that if your engine battery ever fails open circuit (or a cable becomes disconnected), you'll probably fry both alternators, rather than just one.

Agreed. Yes, this is certainly a risk (as well as fusing the alternator cables - which some don't do), maybe unlikely, but certainly there for sure.

55 minutes ago, dom said:

The only simple solution I can think of is to replicate the setup on a typical dual engine system. Connect each alternator to a standard lead acid battery - one for engine cranking, then use the second "spare" battery to run a single item, such as your fridge or water pump.

Yes, one of my draft designs did have the 2nd alternator connected to a 'dummy' battery that was just sat there to connect the alternator and the 2nd DC-DC charger - never thought of using it to power an individual appliance - doh !!! I might re-consider this as an option going forward. Thanks again for the comments.

[dom]

Have you got a bow thruster? Using the dummy for that would be another option if so.

[Karizma]

41 minutes ago, dom said:

Have you got a bow thruster? Using the dummy for that would be another option if so.

Yes. 

[marshman]

Electrifying stuff!!!