After a couple of days hard work on the coachroof, all the the new solar panels are installed. This is a big step into us being self-sufficient and being able to live completely off-grid. The install of the panels went suprisingly well and we were able to reuse 4 of the previous holes than had been drilled through the roof. The other holes we filled were largely covered up by the new panels
The hardest part was actually running the cables through the boat to get them back to the batteries. It involved taking down a lot of the trim to be able to run everything neatly. The good news is that it all went back to together afterwards despite all the mess I created.
The new panels all got connected to three MPPT “charge controllers” that are under the bunk that convert the different solar voltages to 12V that the appliances and batteries can use. It also all gets logged in the Victron computer so we can see what’s going on.
The chart below show’s the last 24hours on Nautilus. We are now producing more electricity than we’re using! 🙂
So what’s next:
I still don’t like our base load being so high – as you can see, we’re still drawing quite a bit of power through the night (we went to bed at midnight). The load from 00:00 to 07:00 is the two fridges and some of the other computer systems. I’m going to see if we can get that down to help make things more efficient.
The next really big change will be the lithium upgrade. It won’t change the amount of power we create, but it will give us a much larger usable reserve in the batteries as well as being lighter and more efficient too. Will keep you posted on progress.
One Response
Your upgrades and maintenance projects have been great to follow and will make a huge difference towards your longer voyages. Love the blogs and forward to 2022 adventure reports.