View Transcript

Hide Transcript

Transcript is auto-generated.

Are you dreaming about having solar panels power your whole boat? Watch this video to find out how. Whether you need a remote consultation design or perhaps inviting us aboard your boat, [music] Pacific Yacht Systems is here to help. Check out the links in the description below. Hi fellow boaters, Jeff Cote here with Pacific Yacht Systems. We've got another installment of Tech Talk. Thanks for joining. So we've got a question uh from Andrea. Andrea asks, "Jeff, is it possible to run my boat from solar power alone?" I love this question. And the assured answer, well, it depends. Theoretically, absolutely. And really the question is how much surface area do you have to mount solar panels on your boat? I've done a 55-ft power boat that had over a 2200-W array, and for about 3 months of the year, the owner never had to run the generator or even run the engines to recharge its batteries. Basically, effectively, the boat was completely off-grid, needed no other charging circuits, no alternator, no shore power. And this boat had washing machine, had a dryer. Basically, it's a house. It's a house on the water, and that house was powered by solar panels. So, if a 55-ft boat can actually run off solar panels and run the whole boat for 3 months, absolutely. Now, that might be a little bit extreme, right? Not all of us are going to have this huge surface area to mount lots of solar panels. Some of us are going to be really limited by the amount of place where we can mount solar panels. Now, you can mount solar panels in different areas. You can mount them on hard tops, on canvas, you can mount them on the decks, you can mount them on the railing, uh you can mount them on an arch, but you're really trying to maximize your surface area. And when you're trying to size a solar panel for your boat, generally the rule is there's a long formula, but the shorthand formula is a factor of four. So, if you figured out from a battery monitor that you need, I don't know, daily amp hour consumption is 200 amp hour consumption per day, you generally need about an 800 W solar array to to give you 200 amp hours. Now, this is assuming, of course, that it's generally sunny, that you're in the summer months when the sun is high on high up in the sky and not too low, right? Cuz the angle of inclination matters. I wouldn't be the same in the winter. And yeah, you can definitely run your boat off solar. And if not, that might be sort of the extreme example, right? Cuz some of us are going to want to do that. But even offsetting half of your loads or 3/4 or staying on the hook instead of staying just 2 days, you stay a third day, or staying 1 day, you stay 3 days, you know, because eventually most of us are going to end up running our engines for propulsion. And while we're running our engines, some of us are going to have high output alternators or alternators that are going to recharge the batteries. Some of us sometimes are going to go back to shore power. We have the ability of connecting to a charger to recharge our batteries. Some of us are going to have generators to recharge our batteries via battery chargers as well. So, it doesn't have to be all or nothing. Most of us are going to be able to benefit from solar panels either to reduce the need for charging, the frequency, and then give us a longer period of time without having to do things that we don't want to, like leaving an anchorage because your batteries are empty, or running your engine and not moving just to recharge your batteries. So, great question, totally doable, and ask yourself how big of a place you can mount your solar panels. If you're curious, and we've just done a lot of solar arrays, and you want to ask more questions about that, consider maybe our virtual consultation and design services. This is where we can actually help you size a solar array for your boat and make sure it does what you want. You can check the links in the description below. If you made it this far watching the video, I want to thank you. Help us grow the channel by liking the video and also subscribing. Cheers and till the next time. Hey fellow boarders, we're going to be doing a lot more tech talk videos. [music] If you've got any suggestions for future video, leave them in the comments below. Once again, thank you for watching.