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Old 02-06-2011, 08:41 PM   #2
Woodsong
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City: Atlanta
Vessel Model: Bayliner 4550 Pilothouse
Join Date: Oct 2007
Posts: 1,630
RE: Tips for a newbie using a generator?

Yes- assuming you have a battery charger wired in the engine room, if you fire up the generator and switch from shore power to generator, you will be charging the batteries and can do anything that requires 110V just as if you were tied to shore power.
Do you have an inverter as well? I assume so since you are asking if load gets too much for the battery.
If you are running the engines, depending on your house battery bank, you should be fine overnight. Generally speaking, in our past boats, we could anchor all day using the 12v system (head, lights, water pump, radios, etc.). We would power up the generator for 20-30 minutes as we cooked dinner to A) cook and B) turn on the air conditioning b/c it is hot in the south). This would recharge our batteries such that we could anchor out all night with anchor light on, etc.
If you are on a mooring and want your generator to kick on automatically, I have no idea how you could do that. Best option would be to set up your solar panels to charge your house batteries and keep the fridge on 12v mode.
If you don't have an inverter and a decent house battery bank, you may find it is cheaper to run the generator a little bit (under load) each day to charge things. After you factor in the cost of the inverter and all the batteries, well, you can buy a good bit of diesel for that cost. But- it is nice to not have a generator running in an anchorage.
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