SAILBOAT TECH: How to transform your ENGINE into a GENERATOR! // Ryan's Tech Corner #10

hi guys so during our trip across the mighty atlantic and throughout the first few months here in the caribbean i came to the conclusion that the charging systems on polar co were drastically undersized we already had a ton of solar no room for a generator wind is too noisy and a hydro generator just costs too much this leaves us with our last solution the alternator in this video i'm going to talk about what an alternator is how they work challenges with alternators on boats and how we will transform our basic engine and alternator to a monster power generator just want to mention that this video is not sponsored and we purchased all of the products we discussed in the video ourselves so what's an alternator an alternator is a device that attaches to your engine you will find these on boat engines car engines and even small airplane engines their first job is to recharge the starter battery so that you can start the motor again the next time their second job is to supply power to devices running like lights and they then charge the battery to support house loads like hair dryers and chart plotters most alternators found on boats coming off the production floor are the same ones found on car engines the alternator that we have on polar seal is a common 80 amp hitachi alternator how does an alternator work typically an alternator is operated by the engine and is connected through a series of belts on polar seal's yanmar engine the alternator is activated when the engine is turned on and the belt starts spinning the belt is attached to a pulley which is on the outside of the casing this pulley then attaches to a rod which is inside of the alternator which is called a rotor inside the alternator the rotor turns with some magnets on it and it spins as the engine runs the rotor spins inside the housing called a stator the stator is essentially a big ball of wires wrapped around an iron ring having the rotor spin inside the stator is what produces electricity through the principles of electromagnetism however the electricity that it's producing is ac or alternating current like is found inside the wiring of your house the problem with this is most electrical systems on boats cars planes operate in dc if you're not sure what ac and dc means you can check out this video on the basics of electrics which we produced so to change ac to dc the alternator has a piece of equipment called a rectifier this is a series of diodes that converts ac to dc and once the current has been converted to dc it passes through a very basic charge regulator and then to the batteries the regulator controls the basic output voltage of the alternator simple right it's true car and truck alternators are actually very simple they were designed to be used with lead acid batteries provide a charge to the battery the one that was being used in starting the engine and then provide small power output to meet the needs of the vehicle well the problem on boats is that we were asking the alternators to do a lot more than what they were designed to do today's boats are asking for more and more power from our electrical systems a boat might have 300 amp hours of power it needs to have replaced in its batteries plus the loads which are currently on the dc system with an alternator operating at full speed at 100 efficiency which you will never ever come close to it would take nearly five hours with polar seals alternator to charge the batteries a good example is when we crossed the atlantic ourselves our two ways of charging were through the solar and through alternator if it had been a really cloudy day or cloudy for multiple days we need to run the alternator and the engine for multiple hours some days up to eight hours just to get our batteries up to eighty percent that's a lot of engine running time just for your batteries so why the lack of efficiency anytime we create energy we produce heat and alternator is no different the alternator produces about 50 percent of its heat in the stator the coils that are wrapped around the rotor and about fifty percent of its heat in the rectifier most alternators are attached directly to the engine block which because it's producing energy is also producing heat typically in a very confined space as the alternator and the engine compartment heat up the efficiency of the alternator is going to decrease so how hot does it have to get well some cheap alternators can produce so much heat that you can literally fry an egg on top as the temperature increases the energy output starts to decrease so the longer your engine runs the hotter it gets the less alternator output you're going to have on a boat we're asking the alternator to provide a lot of power for a long period of time which also increases the heat another issue impacting efficiency is the rotation that happens inside the alternator so the alternator spins faster it's going to produce more power most alternators are designed for a maximum output a specific rpm which is well above the rpm that our diesel engines can run at to get around this we use a larger and smaller pulleys you see here the flywheel on polar seal is very large compared to the alternator wheel so every one rotation that the engine makes the alternator might make two or three rotation while this helps getting the alternator closer to its maximum rpm it is still nowhere near the maximum output on top of all of this we then have inefficiencies with the belt which is turning the alternator if the belt is too loose it will slip and not provide good energy transfer from the engine if it's too tight it would create too much friction and thus more heat this is why it's so important to check your belt tension during your engine checks your engine manual will describe the maximum tolerance for your belt but to check you simply push down on the belt and see how much it moves so how does all this inefficiency translate to power output well on polar seal we have an 80 amp hitachi and there are times when i only see 20 or 30 amps output you can plan your alternator output generally to be between 50 and 60 efficiency range but it will decrease as the alternator ages to expand our alternator problems we now add lithium with normal lead acid batteries because the resistance is so much higher the batteries can only accept a certain charge load as the batteries become topped up the resistance increase and the alternator dials back the output it will continually do this throughout the charge cycle lithium does not work this way the resistance is low throughout the entire charge cycle lithium can handle a massive amount of current with charging these basic alternators don't understand this so if you connect an alternator to a lithium battery it will just keep pumping out power and power and heating itself until boom smoke done bye bye there's a really good video from victron energy which shows what can happen when you connect a lithium battery to a standard alternator i wanted to show you myself but sophie said no so remember to send your complaints to instagram ryan and sophie's so great ryan you're being grumpy again and just telling us all the problems we have with alternators what is the solution well my youtube friends there are some very cool solutions on the market and i'm about to tell you about them so what have we decided to do on polar seal i looked at most options available i wanted as high output as i could safely manage as lithium has its safety limitations i wanted good efficiency and i also wanted a charge controller that could handle lithium batteries a few that i looked on the market were bomber alternators and regulators american power alternators and regulators mark gracer alternators and wake speed alternators and regulators in the end we decided to go with a 180 amp alternator from mark racer what's unique with mark's design is that he has removed the rectifier away from the alternator so if you remember from the start of the video i said that the rectifier is what turns ac power to dc power it's also what generates nearly 50 percent of the heat so moving this part away from the alternator into its own cooling box will allow for better efficiency of the system super cool we also decided to include a wake speed 500 regulator with our system the wake speed regulator is one of the most unique and advanced on the market as of 2020. it can sense both current and voltage of the entire charge system and allows me to set the limits for it so for example the maximum charge current i want going into our entire lithium system is 150 amps if i am running the alternator on a day where our solar system is providing a lot of current my alternator might be pushing out let's say 140 amps while my solar is producing 50 amps the total of this is well above the 150 amp limit the wake speed will recognize this and dial back the power of the alternator to meet this limit it also has a lithium charge setting which is programmable and is important with any lithium setup there are a lot of other alternator chargers out there with lithium settings balmer being one of the most popular however many of these will only sense voltage and not current so that's one of the drawbacks another cool feature of the wakespeed 500 is that if you're on a catamaran you can connect the two charge controllers without the need for a center fielder a topic for another time maybe when we get a cat lastly we decided to upgrade our pulley and belt system to a serpentine system this will allow for less slippage and more efficient energy transfer and hopefully last less black dust all over the engine compartment changing the belt was not really a choice but a necessity as the current belt system was just not powerful enough to meet the needs of our new alternator we ordered the entire system through ocean planet energy who we are not affiliated with nor do we do any product exchange with but they did offer us great support check out mark's kit and ocean energy's website using the link below first sizing when looking for a new alternative the general rule of thumb is to purchase one with an output which is between 20 and 30 percent of your battery bank size a special note here for lithium battery owners you also need to ensure the batteries can accept the entire load of your alternator on polar seal our maximum charge current is 200 amps for our lithium batteries which i don't like to do so i keep things below 150 amps our 180 amp alternator factoring in all of its inefficiencies would be perfect for this job next is the physical size of the alternator most alternators are packed in small engine compartments and include very small alternators we call these small case alternators you can find small case alternators which will produce energy upwards of 200 amps and that should be good enough for most of us the problem with small case is that they're harder for them to dissipate heat and have a bit lower efficiency if you would like to have more output and a bit higher overall efficiency you will need to start looking at large case alternators attachment points are another thing you need to consider there are a few different types of attachment points based on the make and model of your engine on the mr we use a saddle mount which looks like this so before you order an alternator check with your dealer or distributor to ensure that you get the correct type of mounting another important thing to remember is that when you put additional loads on your engine you will take away some horsepower that would normally be there to power the propeller a rule of thumb not requiring a lot of math is to use one horsepower for every 25 amps of alternator output on polar steel we have calculated this to be about six horsepower for our new alternator that translates to a lot of horsepower when we already feel a bit underpowered while motoring so this is something to consider the last consideration is the belt and pulley system on your engine most marine belts and pulleys are barely big enough for standard alternators that come with the engine so the odds are you will need to make modifications to this by either adding a second belt or a serpentine belt if you have a common engine like yanmar volvo or beta there are lots of kits available on the market to help with this pro number one lots of extra power for the induction stove number two higher efficiency from operation so you need to run your engine a lot less to produce more power number three if changing your charge controller you can handle more advanced batteries and charging setups like lithium now for the cons the first one complexity the systems are a bit more complex to stall than your basic alternator con number two cost we spent nearly 3 500 on our setup which what i will admit is a little eye watering what but during our atlantic crossing we put 90 hours on the motor over half of this was for charging only there was one day we were on the crossing where we ran the engine for nine hours nine hours just to charge all i could think about other than noise was how much fuel we were wasting and how much wear and tear we were putting on the motor this all adds up so when trying to decide if the cost of a high output alternator it was worth it i looked inside nigel calder's book the boat owner's mechanical and electrical guide the bible for boat owners so that's it guys that's how you turn your engine into a super duper generator using a high output alternator we know that the pace of these videos has been a little slow lately and that's because we're back and we're working on a bunch of different projects but we do have another video where we talk about how we installed this alternator and we also have some other tech videos coming so please bear with us they are coming we're gonna have them they're gonna be great but that's it for now thanks for watching bye-bye i can't believe we spent 3 500 bucks on this

Channel: Ryan & Sophie Sailing

Views: 77,342

Keywords: Sailing, sailboat, sail the world, cruising couple, sailing adventure, sailing vlog 2019, sailing around the world, sailing vlog, ryan's tech corner, alternator, best generator for boat, sailboat generator, sailboat alternator, high output alternator, high output alternator boat, marc grassers, mark grasser alternator, living on a boat, lithium battery, lithium batteries, electrical system, sailboat electrical systems, lithium batteries for boats

Id: U_J0kyzNUhg

Length: 14min 36sec (876 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 25 2020