twistedtree
Guru
TF is fortunate to have TT report on his findings. Seldom will you find in the boating press or online sources an individual who has the budget, business and proven technical background to jump into the middle of today’s technological Marine offerings as it applies to instrumentation and energy arenas.
Adulation aside for a moment TT, will your new build be initially set up to minimize generator run time by utilizing a Li package along the lines of this thread? If so the need for a solar array comes into question whether initially or as an after addition.
Wow, you made me blush.
The N68 will also have LFP, assuming this whole deployment goes well. The requirements for the boat and pretty close to what I'm doing now, though not exactly the same. Reliability and spares availability is more of an issue with the boat.
The plan is to keep gen run time down, and one of the attractions of LFP is the quick recharge time. Interestingly, LFP actually can't be charged with as high a current as an equivalently sized AGM bank. Manufacturers prefer C/3 to C/4, so 25 to 33A per 100ah of capacity. C is the max allowed, so 100A per 100ah of capacity. I'll be pushing it a bit with 400A going into a 720ah bank, which is C/1.8. The real shortening of the charge time comes from not having an absorb state with a tapering current. That adds 2-3 hrs for a full recharge no mater how large a charger you have. I expect the LFP bank to fully charge in 2 hrs, which will be awesome.
As for solar, yes it's planned right from the start. A friend of mine is doing the same thing and is about a year ahead of me, but he thinks he can get over 1200W on the hardtop.