Today we have Brad’s friend Aaron over on JACE. He’s the island’s leading marine electrician, who I introduced a couple of days ago.
When JACE was built almost 20 years ago, the state of technology was different. As was the mindset about energy use. She was designed to be a blue water cruiser, intended for ocean crossings and living remotely. Aside from superior seaworthiness that mainly meant large tanks, strong refrigeration, a generator, and a water maker.
Over the years she has been modified to go with the times, adding some solar panels, and replacing gas with electric cooking. But some of that were piecemeal efforts that left her in a tweener state. For instance, stovetop and oven can only be run off the generator, as does the AC system. That is pretty inconvenient. And the battery capacity is limited.
Today’s technology has opened new possibilities when it comes to off-the-grid living. The main advances are the efficiency of solar panels and, most importantly, Lithium-Ion batteries. Compared to old lead-acid batteries (think car batteries), this new technology is quite remarkable in terms of capacity. Even more importantly, these batteries can handle very high currents (high power). That is true both for charging, allowing them to be charged from empty to full in very short time, and for discharging, allowing to run a high power load off the battery (think Tesla).
A modern power management setup is therefore centered around a large high-capacity LI battery bank that is mainly charged by a large array of solar panels producing 1kW or more of power on a sunny day – of which there are many where sailors go. This allows almost all loads to be run off the battery, including induction cooking, microwave, and aircondition, which would’ve been impossibly just a few years ago. In a well designed boat this should almost completely eliminate the need to run the generator except for sustained very high loads like the water maker or a dive tank compressor on cloudy days. And those are used very infrequently.
So Aaron is here today to help us figure out how to move JACE fully into the 21st century. Jeff and Lynne had already done a huge amount of that work with all new electronics, new high efficiency AC and other critical upgrades. We want to complete that process by making her a Lithium-Ion boat and increasing solar capacity and upgrading charging power.
So for a couple of hours we rummage around the boat, open every last cupboard and floorboard to find and understand the existing kit, discuss alternatives and identify space where to put the new equipment without sacrificing storage space.
At the end we have a pretty good straw man plan and Aaron gives us some homework as he needs the detailed power specs for all the main consumers on board. With that and the plan and measurements we took, he will prepare a detailed proposal and quotation. It won’t be cheap but being off the grid solely on renewable energy is a value proposition that is not only good for the planet but will increase the value of JACE as a platform for global exploration.
Think about it: propelled by the wind, charged by the sun, water generated and cabins cooled with battery power, and fish pulled right out of the ocean. Not so bad, wouldn’t you agree?
Murray Bosinski is definitely excited.