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Old 05-27-2012, 05:23 PM   #5
BobH
Guru
 
City: Montgomery, TX
Vessel Name: Encore
Vessel Model: Whitby 42
Join Date: Feb 2012
Posts: 844
We just bought the boat and on the way from Beaumont to our Galveston Bay marina I noticed that the batteries were going down until all the electronics quit running. Anchoring out one night on the way all three batteries were dead in the morning so I'm assuming the two "house" bank batteries and the supposedly independent genset start battery are all hooked together somewhere. The plan is for one big house bank and a separate start battery for the engines and genset. This was the setup we had on our sailboat, alternator with external regulator and AC battery charger charged the house bank and an Echo Charge (SolidState ACR) unit charged the start battery.

The alternators are simple internal regulator units. So the question is, can I just parallel the outputs from the alternators? Is there an external regulator that will handle two alternators? With the much lomnger run time on a power boat I realize there is the chnace of overcharging the batteries with a dumb alternator.

Bob
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