Loss of AC dock power...
 

We are on the road 500 miles away from the boat when we get an e-mail from out yacht club that they had to shut off AC power due to low voltage. That was on Thursday. We will not get to the boat until Monday. We have six 6 volt golf cart batteries and two series 24 12 volt batteries with the only load bein' the fridge. Think they will hold up till Monday?

loads?

You should be OK for 3-4 days without charging. CO detectors are usually the biggest parasitic load at 1-2 amps. Your 660 amp hours of house batteries should be able to handle that. But if the fridge is on, maybe not. But it should cut off at about 11.5 v.

David

If you are located in or north of puget sound I doubt the fridge is going to cycle very often

VBG

Fortunate the fridge was not running on AC shorepower. It`s not, is it?

Without knowing what load the fridge is drawing...hardly worth a guess.

Plus if the fridge is in a poorly ventilated space...it is keeping itself warmer than the rest of the boat... Granted we would hope the fridge is better insulated than the compartment so its a small difference..but still...my fridge cycles quite often and need help on several levels.

So without a amperage draw number...even a decent guess...hard to say.

Would the fridge have a low voltage cutoff? Mine doesn't as the PO had a non-marine compressor put in a few years back, but don't some have one?

The usual boat fridge comes from the RV folks where power is no problem.

Figure 100AH per day , less since there will be no door openings , and its cool..

A Sun Frost is about 1/2 the RV stuff in amps .

At least its not cold enough to worry about a DC furnace failing and the boat freezing the pipes and sinking.

Have you considered asking the yacht club to enter your boat and turn the refrigerator off and dump the contents?


Some marine refrigerators will turn themselves off if the power gets too low to protect the batteries.


Also, you're lucky they told you. If they didn't and your frozen chicken, etc. thawed and then refroze when the power came back on and you consumed it, you might have a serious problem.

Fortunately, the newer generation of CO detectors draw a lot less power. If you have one of the older ones it might be worth replacing it. They usually have a life of only a few years anyway, then they must be replaced or recertified.

No CO detector, just the reefer on dc pullin' 6 amps when runnin'. The batts are all wet cells, new this year. The temps have been 70 for highs and 42 for lows.

Maybe but they cost over $2000. :eek:

R10 Energy Efficient Refrigerator

Nope Ancora, your fridge will not make it and your batteries will be toast. Turn it off now. Murphy 101. :nonono:

When we travel south for months at time, we have our other live aboards, my yatch service and marina check on the boat. We have a boat alarms, Boatnanny, that sends a text message to my phone, bilge, AC and DC electric, temperature salon and bilge, motion and sound. So if an alarm goes off I know it with in minutes and call for someone to check on the boat. So call someone if concerned. Better to be safe rather than sorry. :flowers:

If in doubt, I'd get someone to empty and turn the fridge off. The amount of food you'll use is cheap.

Reefer contents of no value, just don't want to lose the wet batts. Any way we'll find out tomorrow mornin' as we are back from our 1,000 mile road trip.

I would be asking the RC what the heck is going on with dock power! Something horribly wrong there


Keith

"Horribly wrong" would seem an exaggeration to me. Loss of dock power, water, etc. in a marina is not unusual and should be planned for.

They even notified him which is pretty good.

You should be fine. With the fridge needing 6 amps when running, in those weather conditions, I doubt that you are running at more than a 30% duty cycle. That is about 50 amp hours in 24 hrs. With a 660 amp hour house bank, you could go almost a week and still stay above 50% discharged.


David

Got any frozen squid in that fridge?? Don't ask why I pose that question!!!

Been there. Thru the fridge out. :blush: