Upgrade Alternator

[majestic]

I want to add another Amp and two more tower speakers, but my stereo guy thinks that I should upgrade my alternator first so I thought I would ask for advice.

The current system includes:

Clarion CMD5
1 Alpine PDX-5 running 75w ea to 4 Wetsounds XS-650's and 300W to 2 JL Audio 10's
1 Alpine PDX-4.100 running 200w ea to 2 Bullet Hollow Point 650's

Want to add:
1 Alpine PDX-4.100
2 Bullet Hollow Point 650's

Boat has Tige EIDB dual battery system, stock 90 amp alternator and Pro Mariner 12 on board charger.

[Tanner]

Personally I don't think any single alternator can hang w/ any of the massive stereo systems. But adding a second alternator, and the correct one is EXPENSIVEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!. If you really wanna do it right, go to wakeworld and look at "G"'s set-up. He does it right.

That being said, my stereo is totally off of my alternator, and the rest of my boat. It's all by itself. I then plug in my batteries and charge them every night. Easy enough, unless you don't have shore power.

[da.bell]

I'm with tanner on this. I have four batteries. Two are being charged from the alternator and the other two are being charged by the charger/tender each time it's parked in the carport.

But, when I talked with Arc Audio last July, they said that the amount of batteries in my boat was overkill. Now, I don't hang in the coves and party like there isn't a tomorrow but I do have the stereo turned up. So, I have had this setup for 1 year and and 55 hours on the boat without a problem.

[chpthril]

I would Add a 2nd deep-cycle to the house bank and then make use of the on-board to charge the batteries when back at the dock/house. The 90A alt will keep up with demand, but will not recharge the house bank, especially if you are anchored in the party cove cranking the tunes for 5-6 hours then make a 20 min ride back to the dock. For an alt upgrade that will do that, your looking at $500, not to mention deep-cycles dont like a fast charge anyway.

[majestic]

Thanks for the help Guys! It sounds like I'm ok with my current set up due to the fact we do not hang in a party cove and keep things at a lower volume unless someone is being pulled. I may consider chpthril idea of adding a 2nd deep cycle and if I drain it no biggie I still have the other two.

[Tanner]

Thanks for the help Guys! It sounds like I'm ok with my current set up due to the fact we do not hang in a party cove and keep things at a lower volume unless someone is being pulled. I may consider chpthril idea of adding a 2nd deep cycle and if I drain it no biggie I still have the other two.

If that's all your doing, then you def. don't need it.

There's times on the holiday weekends that I park it in the party cove and play at 80% volume for 8-10 hours. I have just enough juice. I drain my batteries down to around 20-30% when I do this. Then charge them back up overnight, and am ready to go again the next day. It works for me.

Some like to be able to charge their boat while their playing. But if not done correctly, they are only using their alternator to power their stereo and not charging their batteries. This can kill your alternator as well. Or if just using massive alternators, you can kill your batteries.

The correct way to do it can run around $3K. But no one wants to do that. Here's the correct way to do it... http://www.wakeworld.com/MB/Discus/m...21/314698.html

Only problem with that system is you gotta run your boat to charge them back-up (think CO poisoning). And even then, they don't bring you back to 100% charge.... only like 90%.

That being said... I still prefer a totally seperate battery bank and to charge them at night.

[ds@earmark]

Here's one way of looking at it. 1000 total watts ÷ 12 volts = 83 amps, times 90% PDX class D efficiency = 93 amps, times 50% duty for the transient nature of music program material (more for rap) is less than 50 amps. Add another 15 amps for normal boat operations, ignition, etc. (excludes heater). This leaves adequate amperage on a 90 amp alternator for the initial heavy charging of a fully depleted stereo battery after lounging for several hours.

Its not good to be solely dependent on the alternator as a charger. You can't burn a tank of gas to recharge a battery. And, an alternator does not function like a smart multi-phase charger. A 12 amp AC maintenance charger is enough to fully restore a single battery overnight. The charger will extend the batteries' lifespan and ensure longer play time at rest for the next outing.

Majestic's system appears perfectly balanced as it is.

As long as you've got an adequate shore charger for your system its okay to exceed your alternator capacity by a 20% margin. High efficiency amplifiers really reduce the load.

If I expanded from two to three total batteries then I would definitely convert over from a manual battery switch to an automatic combiner/separator in order to protect the alternator. And I would upgrade to a larger multibank charger.

As boats become more computerized I'm less comfortable with alternator upgrades.

For the next phase, there are more complex schemes for 2 killowatt and larger stereo systems. As the system size increases it becomes more dependent on shore power restoration just like a tournament fishing boat. Automated cascading banks can run up to five batteries safely with only a few restrictions.

Hope this helps.

David
Earmark Marine

[Tanner]

Here's one way of looking at it. 1000 total watts ÷ 12 volts = 83 amps, times 90% PDX class D efficiency = 93 amps, times 50% duty for the transient nature of music program material (more for rap) is less than 50 amps.

Glad you brought that up David. Most people don't realize they're really only drawing about 50% of their max possible amp draw. If they even draw that much! I can't get people to understand this. I hear people saying, "dude, I'm drawing well over 200 amps".... I'm always like, o yeah.... lets break out the meter. Always a shock how much less your really drawing. I guess people don't think about the peaks and valley's that music has.

Maybe this thread will help someone who's searching one day though

[dogbert]

Glad you brought that up David. Most people don't realize they're really only drawing about 50% of their max possible amp draw. If they even draw that much! I can't get people to understand this. I hear people saying, "dude, I'm drawing well over 200 amps".... I'm always like, o yeah.... lets break out the meter. Always a shock how much less your really drawing. I guess people don't think about the peaks and valley's that music has.

Maybe this thread will help someone who's searching one day though

LOL...they probably have a 100 amp fuse for their whole system, too!

[hillboy700]

how about a solar charger on teh top of the wakeboard tower.

[Tanner]

how about a solar charger on teh top of the wakeboard tower.

You won't get enough of a charge to charge a heavy duty battery, let alone a bank... at least not from the one's I've seen. Well.... let me retract that statement. You CAN... but the size of the panel's it'd take would be the size of the boat HAHA.

The panels your talking about are however good for keeping your batteries topped off while in storage, with a battery tender.

[philwsailz]

You won't get enough of a charge to charge a heavy duty battery, let alone a bank... at least not from the one's I've seen. Well.... let me retract that statement. You CAN... but the size of the panel's it'd take would be the size of the boat HAHA.

The panels your talking about are however good for keeping your batteries topped off while in storage, with a battery tender.

unless you store indoors....

I use a solar panel, (www.sunsei.com, the 1.5 amp model) to keep my battery bank topped off in my sailboat, but it is on the water all the time. 1.5 amp is less than the 2 amp trickle that cheap battery chargers sometimes include a setting for. That 1.5 amp solar panel is roughly 18 inches by 15 inches... Pretty ungainly for the top of a wakeboard tower...

Using very crude math, (and a lot of assumptions) we can say that there are 8 hours of usable sunlight a day, but the very early and the very late hours have low power due to angle, so consider an average of four hours of full charging each day. That gets you 6 amp-hours of charging current per day. Say the boat is in the water for 5 days and no days are cloudy. 30 amp-hours is accumulated in a week.

In that week, you have accumulated enough solar power to full-tilt-boogie power:

* A head-unit-only system, (assunes 3 amps average current draw) for 10 hours or a little more.

* A small 4-channel no-subwoofer system (assumes 30 amp average draw) for an hour or maybe a little more

* A medium 5-channnel system with subwoofer ( assumes 60 amp average draw) for 30 minutes.

Again, this is some simple math with a lot of assumptions to make the analysis easy, but that should give you the clear understanding that solar power itself will not run the stereo...