Quote:
Originally Posted by pwesthead
I am curious what a Balmar voltage regulator does and would it be beneficial in my installation. Any help, comments are much appreciated.
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The Balmar alternator will not work with your alternators unless you modify them, and I don't recommend doing so. They are designed to work with a high output alternator (Balmar's and others) that has external terminals for the field wiring. Your alternators don't have these and if you modified them to add these, the Balmar alternator would probably burn them out after a while due to heavy continuous load.
So combined with a high output alternator the Balmar regulator provides much more charging than your existing alternators as they have a three step program that ramps up the voltage as the batteries charge up. Your existing alternator has a fixed voltage output.
But whether a Balmar alternator/regulator is useful for you depends on how you use the boat. If you anchor in one spot for a night or two, pull up the anchor and motor to another spot, then the Balmar system will recharge the batteries in a couple of hours while motoring. If you just go out overnight and come back to the dock and plug in to shore power then they won't be very useful.
Many twins owners who want the benefits of faster alternator charging just replace the existing alternator on one engine with a Balmar alternator and regulator.
Tell us how you use the boat and we can comment further.
BTW I really don't like isolators as they have a significant voltage drop which makes the OEM alternators perform even worse at battery charging. A combiner or an ACR is a much better solution.
David