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Nothing more frustrating than having an undersized battery bank [music] while cruising. Check out this video to find out if you size your battery bank to make sure it's exactly [music] what you're looking for for your boat. Whether you need a remote consultation design or perhaps inviting us aboard your boat, Pacific Yacht Systems is here [music] to help. Check out the links in the description below. Hey fellow boaters, here's Jeff Cote with Pacific Yacht Systems. We've got another installment of Tech Talk. Today we've got a question from a fellow boater, Sonia. Sonia asked, "Jeff, how do I size my battery bank for my boat?" Common question. When you're thinking about sizing your house battery bank, you really need to ask yourself and the first question it's really like saving for retirement. Some of us spend a lot on retirement and some of us are frugal and don't spend that much. So, where do you start? We'll start really by understanding what your daily consumption of power is. And that's going to change depending on, you know, obviously if you're at dock or if you're a cruising. And it's also going to change depending on maybe the season. Some of us use air conditioning or heating and that might change also our power. So, you got to really ask yourself like how much power am I going to use typically in a day? If you haven't installed a battery monitor on your boat, a battery monitor would be able to give you that answer because you could look at literally at every day look at what your daily amp hour consumption is and over time you'll be able to know what your averages are. So, a battery monitor is really like uh having a little bit of accounting software and giving you what your daily or monthly budget is or yearly budget is on your boat. So, knowing that number is essential. The next thing that you want to consider consideration is how long are you going to go without recharging your batteries? So, are you going to stay on the hook for 2 days or you going to move every day? Do you have a solar array that can charge? Do you have a generator on board that allows you to run a charger, right? So, some of this is really like how it's really almost like living paycheck to paycheck. Like the question is how often are you going to be recharging? Now, on some borders, right, the cruise, you know, sometimes they want to do 3 days at anchor. So, they want their battery bank to be able to They got to have their anchor and they want to be able to stay there for 3 days. Now, some of us are going to mix and match, right? And we're going to be able to stay at anchor for 3 days and we also have solar or we also have generator. So, it's a little like having passive income as well. Like you might have some savings, you might have different income streams. So, you got to take all that into consideration and all those variables help you figure out what your battery bank is going to be. And then lastly, it's really going to come out to what kind of battery type you're going to go on your boat. There's this concept with batteries about usable battery capacity. You can't use the whole battery. So, if you see a rating, for example, of uh golf cart batteries, that's a dimension. You can buy golf cart batteries in uh lead acid, AGM, or lithium. A lead acid battery might give you only about 35% usable power. An AGM battery might give you 50%. A lithium might give you 80%. So, as you can see, you can buy a golf cart batteries, they all are about 100 amp hours, right? Well, they're 200 but at 6 volts, so you need two of them. So, it's 200 amps at 12 volts. So, they're all 200 amps at 12 volts, but one of them is only 35% usable for lead acid, flooded, 50% for AGM lead acid, or 80% for lithium. So, that's also going to be something you need to consider when choosing your battery bank is like what kind of battery chemistry am I going to use? And then that's going to size. So, for example, you can do with way more with a lithium battery and so you might be able to save the number of batteries you need because it's 80% usable as opposed to 35% usable for a flooded lead acid battery. Nothing's easy, right? When in doubt, look to rule number one. Rule number one is nothing is ever easy or rarely. So, uh figure out what your daily amp hour consumption is on your boat. If you're not sure, you can do there's different spreadsheets that allow your calculators that might help you figure that out. Although, all too often I find that the calculators are either overshoot or undershoot, and they might get it wrong. You get your input wrong, it makes the output wrong. So, you got to like ask around. The best way to know is getting a battery monitor. So, a battery monitor is very useful for that. And then asking yourself, how long am I going to stay at anchorage or without charging? What other charger profiles am I going to have on my boat? Like, am I going to have solar? Am I going to be running a generator to recharge the batteries? All of that plays in. And so, the battery banks come in different sizes, you know? Um some of us are going to be quite okay. And also, the big loads. Ask yourself, if you've got a refrigeration on your boat, that's going to draw a lot of power. So, you know, battery banks at 12 volts might be as little as, you know, 200, 400 amp hours. And, you know, you can even see lithium battery banks are 1,000 or 2,000 amp hour battery banks. There's huge range. Uh you want to do your diligence because if you overshoot, you're going to waste money in a battery bank you don't use. And if you get it too small, then you're going to have that battery bank that is always undercharged, and you're going to have maybe stuff beeping in the middle of the night that you need to run your engine because the battery's too low. You got to do your homework with sizing a battery bank. And when in doubt, ask a pro. Ask an electrician in your area. Reach out to us. Some of us our clients are reaching out via our consultation and design services. They're wanting us to help them figure out what the right battery bank. We can definitely do that. But, it doesn't always have to be us. Get someone get an expert in your corner. Again, if you made it this far watching the video, I want to thank you. Help us support this channel by subscribing and liking this video. If If in our service area and you'd like [music] to have us come aboard, maybe either for a a repair or refit, check out the link below, and I want [music] to thank you for watching. Hey fellow boaters, we're going to be doing a lot more tech talk [music] videos. If you've got any suggestions for future videos, leave them in the comments below. Once again, thank you for watching.