[PUP] Arild and the design build "thing"

[Dave Cooper]

<How "huge" are those alternators and can you disengage them when not
needed? Also, how does the heat of the engine room affect them?>

All of our AC loads run from our 2 4KW 4024 Trace inverters which are fed by
our 24 volt 800 AH house bank. The house bank is either charged by the
genset running thru the inverters or by our "big" alternator.
"Big Red" is a 275 amp 28 volt Electrodyne alternator belted to the main
engine with two Gates Predator belts. We limit the alternator to 175 amps
(5kw) with the Balmar 624 regulator and it runs cool (140-150 F) and the
belts are holding up fine.

The output is sufficient while we have the main engine on to run all of the
Air Conditioning loads and the rest of the boat while underway. The genset,
which is automatically started if the batteries reach 24 volts for 15
minutes, never starts while we are underway.

The outputs of each inverter is fed thru an EMS load shedding breaker panel
so the inverters are never loaded beyond there capacity (33 amps). This
system has worked well for in past for us and is quite simple and requires
no manual intervention unless you wish too. Manual operation usually leads
to a problem as my "CRS" keeps progressing. I find carrying an egg timer
when I am transferring fuel around saves my bacon often ;-)

We would like to find an all voltage 50/60 cycle battery charger in the
4-5KW range that we could install to be able to use dock power anywhere.
Can't seem to find anything of this nature that would work for us.

We also have thought of a 5-6kw DC genset to put into the system to gain
some efficiency over using the 10 kw AC Genset when we are running the
washer/dryer, and other heavy loads.

We don't seem to notice increased fuel consumption of more than .2gal/hr
when the alternator is running at the 5kw output level vs. being off
underway. This same level output requires about .5 gal/hr running from the
AC genset. Big difference in 24 hrs (7 gal) or 10 days (70 gal) or 30 days
of operation (210 gal)!

Dave & Nancy
Swan Song
Roughwater 58
Caribbean Cruise '07