Charging batteries without shore power?

[Stan M]

Is this your own private dock? If so, install an outlet on the dock and plug in.

I think he said they're not allowed to have electricity at the dock?

 

[JakeTJCJ]

Ok, so I am in the same situation as OP. I have a 2020 210 FSH in a dry slip with no access to shore power. I am getting ready to install a 24v trolling motor and I am collecting/overthinking all my options for charging those batteries.

Option 1: Spend the extra money and buy lithium batteries instead of blue top deep cycle batteries and pull them out when needed and charge them at home. Lithium batteries would be for the weight savings in having to cart them back to the truck. My only foreseeable minus to this option is getting down in the console and unstrapping and disconnecting the batteries each time.

Option 2: Purchase a jackery instead of lithium batteries and a noco charger dedicated just for the two trolling motor batteries, and charge them when needed. Just have to cart the jackery on and off the boat.

Option 3: Do some sort of solar setup on the hardtop. I have the cycle springs top on my boat and it is fairly larger than the factory top. I have no idea how long it would take to charge two deep cycle batteries by solar power, but it was just a thought. The only downside is the boat probably wouldn't charge the batteries while in dry stack. The back end of the boat my get some sun during the day but I would no figure very long. So the only time it would actually charge is when I have it put in the water at the courtesy dock (it sometimes sits out for 2-3 days between in/out)

Option 4: This is my wild card option. I need someone with more electrical knowledge than me to say what is my limiting factor for this option. Hook a power inverter to my house (deep cycle) battery and run it into the console where I would have a 5x2 NOCO charger plugged into it and wired to my 2 trolling motor batteries. When the boat is started, I flip a switch to turn on the Inverter, it starts charging the trolling motor batteries. Now, my starting battery has been topped off by the engines and the DSVR switches over to start charging the house battery, which has the drain of the chartplotter/radio/inverter on it. Completely the cycle of charge and recharge. Of course I would have to research information of how long would it take for the NOCO charger to top off the trolling batteries and would it pay to just buy the higher amp model. And how long would I have to cruise around before the charging was complete or would the house battery run out of charge before, hence breaking the cycle?

 

[Ronnie]

I just moved my boat to a wet slip and have been told the monthly fee includes a $12 charge for shore power access but I have to cover the actual cost of the electricity. I don’t think my onboard charger costs a lot to operate but if it’s more than $25 (twice the month access fee) I am going to be looking a lot more closely at a solar powered alternative. For context, it’s been sunny and over 100 degrees here for the past week,

 

[BlkGS]

Wow, I dunno what you guys are doing to drain batteries this quickly.

On my boat, we would go from dry storage with no charging abilities to the sand bar (10 minute trip tops) with the music cranked. And then we would sit motors off with music going. After I got 2 new house batteries wired in parallel they never went low. I always said that I would pull them and charge them of they got low, but the ACR never kicked them off or anything.

 

[BHudson]

You cannot just replace your house battery with a lithium without modifying your DVSR to manual operation or hooking it to an ignition hot. The DVSR close threshold of 13.4 volts to close the switch will be activated by the LiFePO’s higher rating voltage of 13.6 volts.

Check my post #43 in this thread. https://jetboaters.net/threads/conversion-to-lifepo-batteries.35834/page-3

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You may want to read through the whole thread on lithium batteries that I posted and the input from fellow boaters. The short story on them is buy the more reputable battery like a ReLion or Battle Born. If you are a fair weather boater go with the Tracker branded ReLion batteries that you can get at Bass Pro / Cabela’s. I think the Battle Born is the best but both the ReLion and Battle Born have the best BMS that I could find with Battle Bon taking the win here as it’s BMS will keep you from doing anything to it that would damage it.

As far as your lead acid house battery goes, get a good quality smart charger with a minimum of 10A of charging power, and has a manual equalize charger setting, pull your house battery out, take it home and charge it, then run a manual equalize charge on it and this should restore a lot of its capacity.

Our boats just don’t have a lot of left over charging power, perhaps 5-7 Amps per engine. So with everything off except what’s necessary on your 30 min run you could maybe put 7 amp hours back into your house battery.

Also, don’t leave your boat idling at the sand bar to try and keep the battery charged while people are hanging out on the swim deck, the engine exhaust is right there and the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning is real. Same goes for slow cruising… it’s fine just no one hanging out on the swim deck while slow cruising.

I have a 2019 AR240, after modifying the DVSR red wire to ignition hot, is there anything else I need to do before changing the house battery from lead to LiFePo? Will the lithium house battery charge correctly with the engines running? Should I do anything differently if I also change the start battery to lithium? I also have a two bank Noco charger installed for shore power charging.

 

[FSH 210 Sport]

You need to set your noco charger to either lithium or AGM. Lithium on if it has that setting.

Yes Your batteries will charge normally with your ignition hot source to the dvsr. Mine is manually switched and I’ve been running it that way since the beginning of the season, I’m on boating day 25 and it’s working great. You will / may notice your house battery charges faster since it’s lithium.

No you do not need to do anything different if you change your start battery to lithium.

Even if you change out your start battery to lithium you need to leave the dvsr on the ignition hot set up. You probably know that just need to make sure.

FYI. There is supposed to be a 4 second delay once you power up the dvsr before it will close and parallel the start and house batteries provided there is 13.2 volts present on either the start or house battery. Mine is 10 second delay…. You need to keep in mind that if you leave your ignition switch on the dvsr will more than likely close with the engines off.

Does that answer your questions?