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Old 03-06-2017, 08:54 PM   #15
Ski in NC
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City: Wilmington, NC
Vessel Name: Louisa
Vessel Model: Custom Built 38
Join Date: Jan 2014
Posts: 6,194
You could power your vessel hotel loads with a DC diesel generator. It would require a high power inverter to run HVAC loads and water heater, etc. And at such high loads, 12v is not optimum as the amperage will require huge diameter cables. So you could go to 36vdc or 48vdc or higher to resolve the amperage issue, but then you end up having to separate large loads from the typical 12v loads like lighting, engine, pumps etc.

So to optimize the high load stuff, you end up making things more complicated.

Yes, it all can be done with various flavors of DC. But since shore power is AC, and small DC loads 12v, it really does not make sense to power the big loads with DC. Once you start looking at HVAC and water heater loads, AC makes sense. You feed with AC on shore power, the gennie fits well as AC too.

But it certainly can be done either way.
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