Hi,
My name is John Rushworth. As a satisfied user of Victron products, Matthijs has asked me to write a few words about my experiences for this blog.
My interest is primarily in the electric propulsion of small sailing yachts. I converted my own 26′ sailing yacht Elektra to direct drive electric propulsion. In doing so I wanted a supplier that could provide all the ancillary products I needed under one roof, together with good technical documentation. I found one and that is why I’m here.
My system is a 2.5 kW direct drive which gives me a top speed of 5 knots and a cruise speed of 4. At 4 knots I use 750 Watts. I use a Phoenix 24/25 600 Watt charger together with a Phoenix Charger Control. An Orion 24/12-40 DC/DC Converter provides my 12 Volt DC House Loads.
My battery monitor is a BMV-602S, but I found I wanted more information than was available in that model. Recently I’ve fitted the new BMV-702. I particularly like the instant Watts read-out, so I can easily compare power used with actual boat speed. It saves doing sums in my head! I’ll post some more about the BMV-700 Series as I get to grips with the new features.
Future plans are to fit solar to my boat. A 140 Watt panel should harvest around 350 Watts/day in summer, at my location. I plan to use a BlueSolar MPPT 75/15 to achieve that. Also of particular interest to me is the Color Control GX and integrating that with the VRM portal. It will be fun and interesting to see how an electric boat is actually used, in a web based format.
Personally I think we’ll see more boats going electric as the market grows and I believe Victron are well placed to take advantage of that, particularly now they have partnered with Oceanvolt.
Here is a small article I wrote recently, about my vision for the future, in Electric & Hybrid Marine Technology International. It’s called ‘Sailing Silence’.
So, that is a bit about me and why I use Victron Energy products. I’ll post more on the BMV-700 Series soon.
January 2014
