Shore Power Charger |
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| Here in the Pacific
Northwest, we try not to pin all our hopes on solar panels. It is of
course necessary for the Microship to be able to recharge her battery
from a marina slip, campground outlet, or a host's house current. To
this end, I carry a Marinco
shore power cord and embedded connector on the cowling, connected to a
dedicated AC charger hardwired to the battery.
At the moment, this is a Statpower Truecharge-10, which already has a few sea miles on it as the charger during the brief Fulmar epoch. I say "at the moment" because I have a couple of concerns... the unit draws a few mA from the battery when not plugged in, which disturbs me... and the circuit board, exposed through the ventilation slots in the case, is not conformally coated. This really isn't intended for exposed marine service, and a fully sealed unit such as one of the Guest Waterproof Chargers is probably a wiser choice. The issue here is one of packaging... there is a zone outside the sealed console enclosure that is part of the Microship wiring harness... consisting primarily of Blue Sea Systems distribution hardware, fuse blocks, and circuit breakers. For thermal reasons as well as minimizing heavy sealed connectors, it is best to keep the AC charger in this relatively exposed space, so it must be able to take abuse. |
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