Georges Bank sailing from just South Nantucket to NS

[dLj]

The AIS on Impetuous runs 24/7 when we are sailing. At the marina and once I turn off the AIS and VHF, I unscrew the antenna lead and stick it in the microphone coils to remind me to reinstall it. Hopefully, that will prevent a close lightning strike from frying my electronics.

My radar is a Furuno 1622. I usually run it in "Watchman" mode and it comes up every 20 minutes for a minute of scans. I have it set on 6 mile range thinking that is an hour away for me but I just realized that the big boys are 30 minutes or less at that range. Heck, a container ship at full speed can be past me between scans.

From The Speed Of A Cargo Ship At Sea? Compare Top 10 Types! : "The average speed of most cargo ships is from 12 to 20 knots"

Yes, I run my radar full time when it's needed. I'm doing well for electric power, got 400 amp hours of LiFePo house bank and a 370W solar panel. That solar panel was just kicking out 270 watts and it's cloudy, overcast and raining... I'm typically keeping my battery bank in the top 70% of it's capacity. I've got a wind generator also, but it has a glitch so when I get to port with some time, I'm going to gut it and rebuild it. There were a few nights on the way here that I sure wish it had been running.

But my radar unit takes a surprisingly small amount of power. My Starlink is worse! I only run Starlink for small lengths of time each day then shut it down. It just draws way too much juice. It's almost the same as my frig, but my frig only turns on once in a great while. The Starlink runs non-stop.
dj

 

[Hayden Watson]

...

But my radar unit takes a surprisingly small amount of power. My Starlink is worse! I only run Starlink for small lengths of time each day then shut it down. It just draws way too much juice. It's almost the same as my frig, but my frig only turns on once in a great while. The Starlink runs non-stop.
dj

Do you run your Starlink from the inverter or have you made the modifications to run it off 12V. I understand it uses far less power running off 12v. It requires you to get a small 12.0v regulated power supply and a 48v switched power supply (boost converter). There is a good YouTube video on how to make the conversion so that the Starlink router will run on both 12v DC and 120v AC.

 

[dLj]

Do you run your Starlink from the inverter or have you made the modifications to run it off 12V. I understand it uses far less power running off 12v. It requires you to get a small 12.0v regulated power supply and a 48v switched power supply (boost converter). There is a good YouTube video on how to make the conversion so that the Starlink router will run on both 12v DC and 120v AC.

I'm just running off the inverter. Send me the link please for the conversion. I'd definitely be interested.

dj

 

[Hayden Watson]

I'm just running off the inverter. Send me the link please for the conversion. I'd definitely be interested.

dj

For background, the Dishy contains everything needed to talk to the satellite but it runs on 48v. The Dishy then needs to run that signal to a router for you to interface to with Ethernet or Wi-Fi. There are two ways that I know of to do the job.

1. Ditch the Starlink router. Use your own 12v router that is already in the boat but connect the input to the Dishy through a 48v POE (power over Ethernet injector) that will supply the needed 48v power to the Dishy. One challange here is that the 6-wire connection on the Dishy side is different than the Ethernet standard so you need to attach a new plug with a different layout of the wires.
   There is a company that is making a small device that will do most of this for you.
   
   
   
2. Wire the Starlink router to be able to plug into both 110vAC and 12vDC. This requires you to make a regulated 12v and 48v power supply and remove the face of the router so that you can attach the new extra power leads to the correct traces on the internal power supply in the router.
   FYI, the Starlink router IS A 12V OPERATED ROUTER. They take the 110vDC and rectify the it to DC then use a couple of buck converters to drop it to 12v and 48v
   

This guy and several others I have found also have good hacks to run any DC powered device on your boat from native 12v (or 24v if you have it) without going through the inverter which always will have significant conversion losses.

 

[dLj]

I'll have to walk through all the above and see how to do this. My inverter also consumes more power than I'd like. Getting it out of that circuit would be nice.

dj

 

[Hayden Watson]

I'll have to walk through all the above and see how to do this. My inverter also consumes more power than I'd like. Getting it out of that circuit would be nice.

dj

The very best inverters will only be 90% to 95% efficient and that doesn't include the standby watts just needed to keep them on. You then loose again when you convert it back to DC by an equal or greater amount. The wasted wattage for changing one DC voltage to another is very small by comparison. I have heard that overall, it cuts the total number of Ah consumed in half.
The only tricky part in any of this is how to house the converters. My brother-in-law has a 3d printer and is always looking for reasons to use it so I will draw up the boxes I need and he will print them. The other common option is to use watertight electrical boxes which come in a bunch of sizes.
With something like this, you could mount all of the converers you need and just run the lines out to wherever it is needed.

 

[dLj]

The very best inverters will only be 90% to 95% efficient and that doesn't include the standby watts just needed to keep them on. You then loose again when you convert it back to DC by an equal or greater amount. The wasted wattage for changing one DC voltage to another is very small by comparison. I have heard that overall, it cuts the total number of Ah consumed in half.
The only tricky part in any of this is how to house the converters. My brother-in-law has a 3d printer and is always looking for reasons to use it so I will draw up the boxes I need and he will print them. The other common option is to use watertight electrical boxes which come in a bunch of sizes.
With something like this, you could mount all of the converers you need and just run the lines out to wherever it is needed.

@Hayden Watson - wow, this is really great! When I get somewhere that I can sit for enough time to put this together, I am definitely going to work on this one! Thank you very much!

dj

p.s. we may be talking more in the future. I'm sure I'll have questions...

 

[Hayden Watson]

@Hayden Watson - wow, this is really great! When I get somewhere that I can sit for enough time to put this together, I am definitely going to work on this one! Thank you very much!

dj

p.s. we may be talking more in the future. I'm sure I'll have questions...

Power useage has always been my achilies heel because I have lots of goodies on board like hydronic heat, refrigeration, big laptops... all of which take a lot of power. I used to use 140Ah per day and made some minor changes to my Adler Barbour Cold Machine which cut its useage in half. I am not using right at 100Ah per day in spite of all the above and adding a 50L deep freeze.
Adding this other stuff which will eliminate using my invertor should help even more.

 

[jviss]

made some minor changes to my Adler Barbour Cold Machine which cut its useage in half

Have we discussed this before? I have a vague recollection.... I am very interested.