Originally Posted by
BobJ
I finally got around to measuring all the loads and preparing an offshore electrical budget.
Your comments are encouraged. What did I forget, or what looks out of whack? Thanks!
Morning Star's electrical budget for the 2018 race predicted almost one hour of engine time to charge every day. And that was expecting 7 hours/day of sunshine on rigid solar panels with a total of 225 watts. We had little sunshine for the first 10 days or so, and not a lot over all, and ended up putting a lot more run time on the Yanmar 3YM30 power plant than planned. I don't have my log book handy so I can't tell you the total hours, but it might have been twice what what was planned -- so for my 17-day passage, maybe 30 hours or more. This was really not good for the engine. Then, in the inevitable slow down in usage after getting back from HI, things got worse. The injector nozzles fouled and the mixing elbow became so constricted I was surprised the thing even ran at all.
You are projecting >2.5 times the engine time I was expecting. Not sure that's a good plan, but not sure what the alternative choices would be.
Lee
s/v Morning Star
Valiant 32