Charging batteries with shore power question

[Highlander]

And for you,s who don,t know what a Galvanic Isolator is here u go I,m in the process of pricing one for my boat !
http://www.marinco.com/en/4531001

J

[Loala]

md80max,

If I were you I would trace from the charge connection to where your wiring ends. Usually the Perko switch is simply switching the battery power to the rest of the boat. Depending on where you set the Perko switch will increase or lessen the electrical current load on the batteries. There could be lots of variations but I would think the optimal position for your switch to be, would be the "off" position so your batteries have a clean connection to the charger.

I have the ProMariner charger from West Marine set up on a dual battery bank as well and the charger has separate connections leading to each battery. My father setup a dual battery switch once on his boat that would allow both batteries to be charged at one time but the switch only connected the two batteries together, not to the rest of the electrical system. That was done by other means.

Hope that helps?

[Don T]

Yeah - Electric Cars! The Licences Plate on the car means: "F"-YOU OPEC in Hoboken talk.

I have seen other plates similar. Byopec, zeroe, ect. People do not realize there is no such thing as zero emissions. You are trying to tell me that the tires you are riding on will never wear out? The batteries you are using last forever? There was no oil consumed manufacturing the vehicle or shipping it to you? The only car that has zero emissions is the one that is not manufactured.

I will concur ONLY if you are being scientific and not using the argument to bash electric car emissions as being no better than gas cars.

[vizwhiz]

So to play on the sidelines, since the original question seems to have been sufficiently answered, it takes the same amount of energy to build, move, and maintain a car...electric, gas, or diesel... It just becomes more visible to the consumer if the costs, the emissions, or the fuel consumption is one way or the other. The point is, that energy comes from somewhere...and emissions are connected to "making energy". Unless the vehicle factory is running on solar, wind, or nuclear, and the car is charged completely from solar or wind, then the net energy - thus emissions, are going to be pretty much the same from cradle to grave.

So your car runs on electricity...how does the electricity get generated? Coal or natgas or something that produces emissions. You're using more electricity than the guy whose car runs on gasoline. So he produces the emissions at the car. You produce the emissions at the electrical generating plant by making them provide you more electricity to charge your car. Net emissions are probably not that much different - but it's visible to the public at the gasoline powered car, and not visible to the public at the electric car. Word games, semantics, shell game of hide the emissions...laughable.

If someone were to do a true energy and money study on an electric car (a market which I think should be encouraged to continue to grow, by the way, just don't pretend they're any more environmentally responsible), meaning figure out the dollars per mile for the life of the vehicle, perhaps 100,000 miles, without bias, i think the results would still be surprising. If you include the cost of the electricity used to charge, the replacement batteries if needed, the initial higher cost of the vehicle, and compare to a gasoline powered vehicle of roughly the same size and complexity, i think you'll find that because the energy density of gasoline is so high, it will still come out cheaper to the consumer - in all ways, including emissions - to build, buy, and run the gas powered car.

And for those wishing to argue the electric car's torque and such - it takes the same amount of horsepower to move the vehicle a certain speed over a certain distance, regardless of the motive driving it. To move a four-thousand pound load at 60 mph for two hours requires a certain amount of power, period. Again, it's about where the energy is spent, and how efficient the power generating, transfering, erc. happens. So the "emissions" are going to happen. It's just a matter of where and how visible they are to the people watching.

This has been a public service announcement from your local friendly mechanical engineer.

[grady]

So to play on the sidelines, since the original question seems to have been sufficiently answered, it takes the same amount of energy to build, move, and maintain a car...electric, gas, or diesel... It just becomes more visible to the consumer if the costs, the emissions, or the fuel consumption is one way or the other. The point is, that energy comes from somewhere...and emissions are connected to "making energy". Unless the vehicle factory is running on solar, wind, or nuclear, and the car is charged completely from solar or wind, then the net energy - thus emissions, are going to be pretty much the same from cradle to grave.

So your car runs on electricity...how does the electricity get generated? Coal or natgas or something that produces emissions. You're using more electricity than the guy whose car runs on gasoline. So he produces the emissions at the car. You produce the emissions at the electrical generating plant by making them provide you more electricity to charge your car. Net emissions are probably not that much different - but it's visible to the public at the gasoline powered car, and not visible to the public at the electric car. Word games, semantics, shell game of hide the emissions...laughable.

If someone were to do a true energy and money study on an electric car (a market which I think should be encouraged to continue to grow, by the way, just don't pretend they're any more environmentally responsible), meaning figure out the dollars per mile for the life of the vehicle, perhaps 100,000 miles, without bias, i think the results would still be surprising. If you include the cost of the electricity used to charge, the replacement batteries if needed, the initial higher cost of the vehicle, and compare to a gasoline powered vehicle of roughly the same size and complexity, i think you'll find that because the energy density of gasoline is so high, it will still come out cheaper to the consumer - in all ways, including emissions - to build, buy, and run the gas powered car.

And for those wishing to argue the electric car's torque and such - it takes the same amount of horsepower to move the vehicle a certain speed over a certain distance, regardless of the motive driving it. To move a four-thousand pound load at 60 mph for two hours requires a certain amount of power, period. Again, it's about where the energy is spent, and how efficient the power generating, transfering, erc. happens. So the "emissions" are going to happen. It's just a matter of where and how visible they are to the people watching.

This has been a public service announcement from your local friendly mechanical engineer.

Agree! Only for every gallon of gas your car burns it probably takes at leas another gallon to get it to you. So you car that get 40MPG acually gets 20MPG in its carbon foot print. So we swapp to electric vehicles overnight. Guess what our grid can not handle the load so we spent billions of gallons building a larger grid making our foot print larger. The Tesla S is a great car. The first electric car that could replace a gas car. Sorry a 70 mile range just does not cut it. When your commute is 30 miles each way and then you have 20 miles worth of errands to run. That being said I would put money that a straight gas Civic that gets 40MPG has a smaller foot print than the S.

Sorry I just do not think the human race will ever figure out how not to destroy this planet. Our appitite for consumption of stuff is just too great.

[dlandersson]

Just an FYI, electric cars (the batteries in pareticular) have a much greater production "footprint" than a gas or diesel car.

it takes the same amount of energy to build, move, and maintain a car...electric, gas, or diesel... .

[Don T]

Hello,
Oh guys, you couldn't be more wrong. Electric cars in my neck of the woods run off of hydro and wind. Gas cars waste 75% of the energy they are consuming, sorry, just not very thermally efficient. There are ~ 37 KWh in a gallon of gas, a Nissan Leaf will travel 150 miles on 37 KWh. The Model S slightly less. Whenever I hear that "long tail pipe" stuff I just laugh. Gas car folks will argue that coal plants pollute as much as gas cars do but that isn't true either. Because of the efficiency of electric drive gas cars still pollute 2 times as much as an electric being charged via coal plants. AND gas folks don't add in the energy to drill, extract, transport, refine, distribute and deliver that gas into their tank. That's a pretty long tail pipe. Heck, a Nissan Leaf can travel about 20 miles just on the electricity required to refine 1 gallon of gas. Add to that the fact that we have to protect our energy sources with a huge standing military presence over seas or, as in recent history, mow over native Americans who get in the way so we can have more. Last fact, fossil fuels are a finite resource and eventually it will run out. As that happens, wars will be waged over the last remaining oil. Eventually everyone will have to be driving electric cars unless some new tech comes along to replace it. Maybe global warming will starve us into extinction before the oil runs out, who knows. All I know is the time to figure it out is now not 20 or 50 years from now.

[grady]

I am not saying electric is not the way of the future. However we are still going to have a massive carbon footprint with that. Hopefully less than gas. I am trying to do my part.

Endless hours of boating per year! Approx 5 gallons of gas. I use it to get in and out of the marina. Then a couple of times a year I run it for hours around the lake to keep it working. The electronics and sails I have purchased probably have more of a foot print.

Hose powered with a 100% wind electricity plan.

Commute 18 miles one way in a Honda CR-Z (Not realy a good hybrid for gas mileage but at least it is NOT a Prius!!!!)

Tow vehicle a Chevrolet Colorado that I have owned since 2005. 160,000 miles.

As much as I can Commute 22 miles one way on my Stromer.

[BOAT]

Carbon footprint is just that: CARBON - you burn things. The sun is the ultimate power source of all things - wind, solar, and even the dinosaurs that made the oil and the plants and even you. All power came from either the molten core of the earth or the atomic power of the sun. If your against atomic power then you should stop using the sun - it's power is atomic. The earths core is thermal - GEO thermal and cooling down - all things eventually burn out - NOTHING is renewable - eventually the sun will pass, and the earth will cool. We can drain the geography of burnable product - might take a long time but it will run out, but so will everything else. We can mine heat from the earth and release it into the atmosphere (and cause thermal pollution) or we can use the atomic radiation that is getting wasted every day right here on the planet surface. You guys decide.

By the way - a 1000 megawatt gas fired turbine power plant is more than 2000% more efficient getting power out of a gallon of fuel than a car engine.

A lot of you are saying power plants make more pollution but you just plain wrong on that. (That's my business for over 40 years).

[mrron_tx]

Well.... I own a Dodge 3500 diesel dually that gets real good mileage, a 48kw generac home genset , a diesel Bobcat 863, a diesel Kabota tractor, an old Jeep and a 1948 Ford 8N tractor. Also a Susuki 70 four stroke and a Tohatsu 6 four stroke. I have tried to appease the carbon footprint gods by planting over 25 thousand pine trees Maybe I'm not doing too much damage Ron.

[Don T]

We are doomed, doomed I say!

Which do you think will get us first?
1. Global warming; huge weather events, loss of arable land, melting of the polar ice caps / engine of the oceans = starvation?

2. Global conflict over last remaining resources like oil, water or just because we are stupid that way?

3. Pandemic?

4. Other?

What to do?

[Wind Chime]

We are doomed, doomed I say!

Which do you think will get us first?
1. Global warming; huge weather events, loss of arable land, melting of the polar ice caps / engine of the oceans = starvation?

2. Global conflict over last remaining resources like oil, water or just because we are stupid that way?

3. Pandemic?

4. Other?

What to do?

4. Other

Accidentally only bring enough beer for 3 days - on a 5 day cruise ... doomed! One crisis at a time

[BOAT]

Yeah, in case you have not figured it out yet I am not much of a tree hugger. Over here in California everyone is Enviro-'Mental' crazy nut jobs and I just prevent all arguments here at home when I go to parties and stuff by just stating right up front that I am a gross polluter and have no plans for getting treatment. At least the "recovering-carbon-addicts" are sympathetic to me and will still be my friends - the rest of them? (I really don't want to be friends with anyways). A lot of the "recovering" gross polluters in my town still love to go to the desert with me and tear up the dunes burning fossil fuel in dune buggies and secretly smoking cigars and eating Ding-Dongs at night around the campfire. I keep their secrets.

Bearing that in mind - I do draw the line on Enviro-MENTAL-ism and stupidity: It's stupid to pour millions of gallons of raw oil into the Gulf of Alaska just because some overseas British Oil Conglomerate CEO is too cheap to let his workers spend an extra two days to test a well head before they operate it.

Anyways, the concept that a geological record of massive climate changes on planet earth occurring every 10 to 20 thousand years with rapid changes occurring within time spans of 100 to 200 years is a fact - that fact is recorded right there in the ground for all to see. The planet has changed it's climate many many times and some times in a time span of less than 100 years. It's happened many times before, and it's going to happen again - and there is nothing - - - NOTHING - - that you or me or anyone else can do about it. The mere concept that meager men with their puny industrial machines which have only existed for the past 150 years permanently change the climate in less than 75 years is ridiculous. It's the biggest scam ever perpetrated on mankind. The current changes we are experiencing have happened before and the scientist know it - they are just using the natural phenomenon they KNOW is imminent as a device to trick and control an uneducated public - just like white men used the eclipse of the sun and moon in the old days to scare the natives into submission, that's exactly what the man made climate change people are doing to you people. It's a trick. You CAN'T stop the climate change - you could eliminate ALL human activity and it will do NOTHING.

But again, that's no excuse for being stupid. Pollution kills people. It's something we need to control. Electric cars are a great way to REDUCE pollution but more important they are a way to save a lot of money on maintenance, repairs, and oil. Brush-less motors have near no parts, no oil, no water, no tranny fluid and don't waste half their fuel making heat - the motors deliver 100% of their HP at 1 RPM - (why trains use them) and they are cheap to charge (about a buck-fifty for 75 to 100 miles) That's a good deal for a little commuter car for the daily trip to the office. We all need a big monster truck in the driveway for the weekends, but why put all that wear and tear on the big metal just to get to work every day? That's a waste and it's stupid. Save your trucks for towing the boat, not groceries. (What - you gonna paint your truck PINK too? hauling Walmart milk and Traders Joe's froo froo specialty olive oil in your 1 ton GMC? - makes you look like a wussy boy). Stupid.

[Don T]

My view is, sure climate will change always has BUT human activity is accelerating it's effects. What are you going to do? Be stupid and keep doing the same stuff and kill off your grandkids or do what we can do to try and help them survive? It's about the future, giving a damn about the people that come after you. AND that applies to littering the marine parks we visit, the places where we live or the Gulf of Mexico with faulty well heads.

You are right about one thing but George Carlin said it best.
Ecologists are arrogant to think they can change anything. The earth will be fine it's not going anywhere.....WE ARE!
Ten thousand years after we kill ourselves off by being stupid the earth will be as pristine as ever with no sign of humans.

[BOAT]

My view is, sure climate will change always has BUT human activity is accelerating it's effects. The earth will be fine it's not going anywhere.....WE ARE!
Ten thousand years after we kill ourselves off by being stupid the earth will be as pristine as ever with no sign of humans.

Your right on both counts - but am I going to worry about "accelerating it's effects"?

When you are talking about changes over a period of 100 to 200 years who cares about an acceleration of 50 years?? It's pointless to spend trillions of dollars and put millions into poverty just to shave 50 years off something that is inevitable - you can't stop it - and you can't reduce its severity. The climate will change and it's gonna be bad or mild no matter what we do. The planet changes it's entire magnetic polarity during these changes - what occurs is often so cataclysmic that most living things are wiped out - and your worried about burning a little more coal?? Come on - get real.

That's why the REAL scientists that are honest with us are talking about other planets - we think they are looking for life - that would be okay, but they are not looking for life, they only say that to get more funding because that makes us little people interested and our tax dollars - what they are really looking for is a place for us to live while planet earth destroys all life on the surface just like it has done many times before. The movie "Interstellar" was made by people who were trying to make an honest assessment of the reality of what is coming to planet earth - they realized there was NOTHING we can do to stop it. In that movie all earth industry shifted to agriculture but it did no good, and they KNEW it would do no good. There was really only one real answer to the problem. Try to find a place to sit it out for 2 or 3 hundred years while the earth went through it's normal climate change cycle. That movie probably did one of the best jobs of showing what the real future would look like if we get caught in one of earths major climate cycles. It's a process of slow death. I recommend the movie because all it's science is accurate and was vetted by real HONEST scientists. A line in the movie by the main character says "our future is not hear - it's out there" - and if catastrophic climate change or solar flares are coming then it is the only option to avoid death. The fossil record states that when the climate changes happened past generations of life on earth just died, and we might too.
http://www.interstellarmovie.net/
I refuse to change because of a lie. That's stupid.

I will change based on what is true and what can be proven. And I think the electric motor is superior to the internal combustion engine - it's just science and numbers, not politics. "Global Warming" is just politics - it's stupid. I believe in science, not politics.