The Best Battery Type To Use On A Windlass?
Transcript is auto-generated.
Wondering what type of battery you should use for your bow thruster or windlass? Perhaps AGM or lithium? Here's my advice on which one to choose and how to charge it. We have a big announcement. You can now become a YouTube member. You can join as a YouTube member right now here on screen for custom loyalty badges and emojis. Or [music] if you are looking for exclusive early access to our videos, live Q&As, and more direct support on your project, [music] we also launched our brand new Patreon page linked in the description below. Thank you so much for watching and being part of the Pacific [music] Yacht Systems community. Now, let's get back to the video. Hey everyone, Jeff Cote here with another installment of Tech Talk. We've got a question from John from Queensland, Australia. He's got a sailboat. He's intending to install a lithium battery bank on his boat. He also has two brand new AGM batteries that he'd like to use at the bow of the boat to power the windlass. And he's getting conflicting information on how to make that work considering that he's going to be installing a lithium battery bank. So, using an AGM battery is totally the right choice in my mind for powering a windlass and not that you can't use a lithium, but I don't feel like you need to and I'd save the money from buying a lithium on my bow thruster battery and spending more of that money on my house battery bank. In the past, having different battery chemistries on a boat was a real problem because battery chargers weren't really able to charge multiple battery chemistries, most of them. And so, you really had to have one single type of battery chemistry on the boat for starter, for house, for auxiliaries like maybe your battery bow thrusters, anchors, stuff like that should have all been one battery type chemistry. But with the advent of DC to DC charging converters, and these are devices that allow you to charge from one battery to another. You can actually, instead of having a pair battery combiner or a battery switch with just force a parallel, you can actually modify the input voltage to have a different output voltage. So, you can actually configure the DC to DC charging converter to actually go from a lithium battery bank to an AGM battery bank. And Victron, for example, does that. I have the same sort of setup on my boat. I use a DC to DC charging converter to recharge my engine battery on my boat, which is a flooded lead acid battery. And yet I have a lithium. But it really doesn't matter now the different types of chemistry because in John's case, he's going to be able to install a lithium and still be able to recharge his two AGM batteries at the bow to power his windlass. And he's going to be able to do that with a Victron DC to DC charging converter that is customized exactly for what the AGM are going to need. So, definitely doable. The advice in the past was real and there was a real concern, but mixing and matching different battery chemistries with the advent of DC to DC charging converters is not an issue anymore. So, it's a definitely doable project. If you're wondering about more, check out our website in the link below. We have got a lot of information on DC to DC charging converters. If you're shopping for one, maybe check out our website where we sell that at rodanmarine.com. >> [music] >> And if you're wondering and wanting to have us help you for your project, we can either do, of course, installs, but we can help you design also a system for your boat. Thanks for watching and take care. Hey fellow boaters, [music] we're going to be doing a lot more tech talk videos. If you've got any suggestions for future videos, leave them in the comments below. Once again, thank you for watching.
