Everyday Boat Battery Switch Tops Boaters’ Shopping Lists

Your everyday boat battery switch is now getting its day in the sun. And that’s because more and more boaters need switches to get the most from solar and other energy resources.

Boat battery switches have been around for ages. Their job on the boat has traditionally been to switch in a battery back-up to start combustion engines.

Today though, solar boaters need and do more with battery switches than ever before. They not only switch backup batteries into and out of circuits, but also connect solar panels, solar devices and marine electronics equipment into fail-safe power networks.

Beyond backup power to start an engine, this means that boaters must also consider backup power for their navigation, communication and vital appliances such as watermakers and emergency light and radio beacons.

Those concerned about safety at sea often design their electrical systems around battery bank configurations that are prioritized around safety considerations. In such configurations, energy sources, such as solar cells, wind generators and hydro generators, are matched to specific battery banks that power specific sets of electronic devices and appliances.

Efficient marine power management requires that you have a network of switches that will allow you to efficiently redirect power from energy sources to batteries and appliances. For this, there are power management control units, run by power management software, that automate the often overbearing task of manually turning on and off equipment.

Power management units, which are basically an automated bank of boat battery switches, will turn power on and off, connect low batteries to energy generators and also reorient the direction of your solar panels for you. Even better power management systems have easy to use interfaces that display exactly how much energy is being generated by each energy source and the level of electrical energy in each of your batteries, and then to top it off, feed that into your route planning software.

Full-featured power management units even let you program in your own power alarm notices and personalize your own power efficiency strategies This enables you to configure automated energy saving functions, like turning off lights and disconnecting entertainment devices whenever power resources become strained.

When you design your boat’s power system, one way to start is by dividing your electronics and power sources into definitive groups. For example, lump all your high power appliances into one group. There, put watermakers, heaters, generators and microwaves. For your low power group, select devices like your cell phone, calculators, small lights and flashlights. For your medium power group select items like your PC, mid-sized lanterns and lights.

Then look at your energy sources and see which will match the needs of each power group. Determine what size solar cell panels you will need to power all the items in each power group over a given time period.

Also consider matching the battery requirements for each power group to specific types of batteries. It may take some high-powered large batteries as well as mid-sized batteries or just one or two great big batteries to design a system that meets your personal needs.

Because today’s battery technology is changing quickly, make sure you evaluate all the different types of batteries and the most critical battery specifications. Things you should consider include battery discharge rate and level, the battery’s weight and the battery’s ampere-hour to weight ratio.

The latest batteries have low weight-to power ratios, much lower discharge rates, and can work at much lower discharge levels than your classical lead-acid batteries. And this means that the newer battery technologies may very well produce more reliable energy sources than antiquated lead-acid technology.