I am feeling a bit wet behind the ears about this - Blue Moon (a 26M) is the first boat I've owned since I was 12! And that one didn't have a battery .... or an engine. In fact it only had one sail.
I keep Blue Moon on the Norfolk Broads and so have access to shore power supply from time to time. I have recently fitted a small fridge and I will need to (a) run the fridge only when the engine is running (b) charge the battery occasionally by other means than from the alternator. At present a mains driven battery charger seems to be the simplest and best entry option for me - solar panels and other devices seem to have various drawbacks. I don't want at this stage to have a hard-wired charger - just one I can carry aboard and plug in to the shore mains AC supply. Is this a good course and if so what kind of charger should I get? A knowledgeable local boat-yard guy said just an up-to-date car battery charger is fine, but the scary book '12 Volt Bible for Boats' seems to have much more advanced advice about multiphase marine chargers.
This rooky would be glad of any advice on the subject.
Cheers
Pete Came
Thu, 02/07/2009 - 12:22pm
#1
Battery charging
Peter,
see http://community.macgregorowners.org.uk/media/p/230/download.aspx for a photo of Mike M's set up for shore mains connection and a mains battery charger.
The charger is a multilevel chanrger as Mike has a "house battery" as well as the Mac supplied engine battery but if you are going to run a fridge then a "house" battery would be recommended to safeguard your engine start battery from accidentally getting discharged by the fridge.
The mains consumer unit is a regular type used in camping and has all the necessary safety protection and connects into a standard marina mains supply.
The charger also would normally have a double chargeing output to charge each battery individually.
Cheers
Morris
.