Lagoon 380 Lithium Project
More Solar and Batteries = Noise and Pollution Free Air Conditioning
Air Conditioning off Batteries
The Lagoon 380 is a 38 ft Catamaran with 21 ½ ft beam and a very popular cruiser around the World.
This Lagoon previously had a generator to provide electrical power for Air Conditioning at anchor and away from shore power.
The Cat has 2 Air Conditioning units; a 16 and 12 BTU Cruise air.
Expectations and Goals of the Lithium Project
This Owner wanted to be on the hook and run Air Conditioning without a generator with its associated noise, fumes and fuel needs.
Air Conditioning off Batteries
Running Air Conditioning generally requires a shore power connection or Generator to handle loads.
However within the last year or so the increase in energy density of the latest Lithium batteries and the advanced equipment to manage and distribute power, it is now possible to rely on Solar and Battery storage to replace the need for a Generator. At this point Catamarans have the deck space to install enough Solar to facilitate this feature .
The Lagoon has a hard top above the steering station that is perfect for solar panels. An additional arch was added to increase the Solar Panels to 1580 watts. The new arch had 3 x 360 watt panels in addition to the 500 already on the hard top.
The 1200AH battery bank was situated under the aft port berth.
Designing the system
After the brief from The Owners, Chris Humphries from Annapolis Yacht Sales collaborated with Peter at PKYS to come up with a plan to achieve the Owners Goals. Below is the Final Diagram of the Electrical System. A list of components are below.
The system accepts power from Solar, Shore Power, Engine alternator and Batteries. The Features of the Quattro inverter will take power from whichever sources are available and distribute them accordingly.
One advantage of Lithium batteries is that due to their low internal resistance they will accept a very high rate of charge and so will charge quicker than Lead Acid. This means even in short periods of motoring the batteries can quickly get a charge.
Components
Quattro 12/5000/220 Inverter Charger 120 Volt AC, 12 Volt DC
Solar Panels; 3 x 360 and original 500 watts for total 1580 watts
MPPT charge controllers
Cerbo & Touch 50 Cerbo is the main control of the system
VE bus BMS the BMS is needed for Lithium batteries
Smart shunt this shunt is a Battery monitor which uses your phone/touch50 to read the data
Battery Protect this protects the batteries in case of a system failure.
Digital Multi control adjust charge current on the fly when connected to shore power
DC DC charger one for each engine
The port aft cabin provides lots of space for the Batteries and equipment.
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