Charging batteries

[viper1]

I was wondering about an electric trolling motorc24 volt. I have a 12 volt two battery system on boat. Have thought of adding 2 more 12's for a24 volt trolling motor. Just wondering since I dock the boat without electric how could I keep them charged.

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[UncleWillie]

Re: Charging batteries

Options...

Take them home and charge them.
Bring a generator with a DC output.
Charge from auto with a long jumper cable.

(The second two options require a lot of sitting around.)

If you go out more than once a year, forget solar panels!

Or... When they go dead, trade them in for fresh ones! j/k

 

[smokeonthewater]

Re: Charging batteries

sadly there IS no GOOD option.... a generator would work but you could be looking at 8 hours or more. You could pick up a small 1000 watt 2 stroke unit ($150 at harbor freight) and build a vented dock box for it.... gas it up, start it, plug into your onboard 2 bank charger, lock the box, and go home, It would run till it ran out of fuel.
otherwise, take them or the boat home to charge, as willie said, or get a slip with electric.... you COULD actually use solar panels but you would be spending a mint on them

 

[viper1]

Re: Charging batteries

Ok Thanks guys. Just what I thought. But figured id ask anyway.

 

[toolman99]

Re: Charging batteries

Actually, you could get a decent size inverter connected to your main battery and a 12/24 volt charger for your deep cycles for under $400 and always charge all your batteries when the engine is running. If you use your trolling motor a lot vs your engine you could run the batteries flat (so you would have to plug the chargers into shore power to fully recharge them)

just an option, That's what I'll be doing as soon as the snow leaves

 

[fishrdan]

Re: Charging batteries

What type of engine do you have on the boat, OB , I/O, inboard?

I can charge my 24V trolling bank off my main engine and do it all the time. This requires a 12/24V plug for the trolling motor and one of the TM batteries tied into the main engine's battery switch. When you want to charge the trolling batteries pull the parallel jumpered TM plug and insert a series jumpered 12V "charging plug". When you flip the main engine's battery switch, it ties the trolling batteries in with the engine's alternator. I have a 100 amp alternator on a Mercruiser 140HP and the alt put out around 60amps at idle. You can't have your cake and eat it too, so, yes there are drawbacks... Even at idle the alternator is hitting the batteries with a lot of current 30+ amps each when they should be limited to about 20 amps. At cruise it would be putting out 50 amps/battery which is WAY too much,,, so I don't do that. It works for me since I can troll off them main engine for several hours to charge up the trolling batteries, then swap back over to the trolling motor. If you can't idle around for several hours (which most people don't) this won't work for you. Also, the wiring from the engine to the trolling batteries needs to be sufficient to handle that amount of current, and protected from excessive draw if the engine is started. I have 50 amp breakers on the TM batteries and haven't popped them, even when I mistakenly had the trolling bank tied in with start battery and cranked the engine over.

I work it something like this, troll off the TM from 5am to 11 am, troll off the main from 11am to 3pm (low catch rate time of day), then back to the trolling motor the rest of the day. I still have TM power to spare at the end of the day. The batteries then get charged at home off the onboard charger.

Will this work for you, eh, probably not... But it is possible.

 

[jopes]

Re: Charging batteries

Minnkota and other companies make a charger for multiple batteries that plug into shore power. If your lacking shore power but run your main engine a lot Minnkota also makes a multiple bank charger which will draw power from your main system to charge up to 3 batteries at one time.