Expedition Yacht

This section has been very quiet for a long time but that’s going to change. 

To recap the situation a little bit: we had 3 generator sets on board, each delivery 380 V/50Hz and 220V DC power (for winches and thrusters). We ‘ll keep one generator and put a bigger (280 KW) AC generator on it to handle bow- and stern truster. We’ll add 2 new AC Northern Light gen. sets (about 70-90 KW each) and maybe a small harbor set (20 KW) that may also be configured as a emergency generator.

Basically we have to renew the complete electrical system. After all, the switchboards have to change and that means new wiring, up to current class-standards.  Then we’re going to add a lot of new equipment (think air conditioning, water maker, sewage treatment, lighting, SCUBA compressors, cranes, incinerator, vacuum toilets etc.) so we’re in for a major electrical refit.

The company we have selected for the design & calculation and switchboard production is Dutch electrotechnical company Piet Brouwer Electrotechniek.   They have been around for over 45 years.  In fact, they actually installed the current electrical systems in our vessel (built in 1989). With a long history in the commercial marine field, they have started to carve a niche in the yachting world as well.  They design and build their own switchboards and have a daughter company, Marble Automation, that builds custom automation systems.

Their flagship product is the MS-3080 ship automation system, certainly one of the most powerful and complete automation system you can get on board a yacht.  There’s no end to what you can do with this system but unlike many products in this field that target the yacht market, this product is rock solid and has proven reliability and hundreds of installations.  Needless to say it’s class approved.

During the coming weeks we plan to work out a load balance with Piet Brouwer’s company and define the scope of our automation. This includes making a list of all the electrical equipment on board, its power needs and look at several operating scenarios (at anchor with guests, arrival/departures in port (use of thrusters), cruising, etc.). Based on the outcome we can size our generators, define load-shedding situations (which equipment gets kicked off the grid to avoid generator overload and in how many stages.  We’ll also look at class requirements and then we’ll start designing the real thing.

An exciting part of this conversion project as we want to make it a smart system where generators always have at least a 75% load, build in a lot of convenience and safety related automation yet don’t go over the top and forget about common sense human decisions.  Instead of over-automating things (which always requires a lot of assumptions, margins that may lead to less than ideal generator load, it makes more sense to have information about the electrical system at crew’s fingertips at different locations and educate them on its use.  That way, we avoid fancy and costly automation equipment and use our generators smartly.

So stay tuned for more.

This is an only 5 year old Deutz 1015 (370 hp) driven gen. set which we plan to keep.  It will be used during manoeuvring when using bow and stern trusters.  As you can see better in the picture of the port generator below, the auxiliary engine powers both an AC and DC gen. set.

We plan to replace the port set with two 50-65 KW gen. sets. This way, at night , we run only one generator. During day time or with more equipment running, we start the second one. If we are going to do maneuvring using the bow and stern thrusters, we put the big Deutz on line too.

Class rules requires that there is one spare generator to run all essential equipment. We can’t run everything on 65 KW but with the help of non-preferential switches, we can comply with the rules. The added advantage is that we’d have a double back up system: 2 spare generators.

We’re looking at Northern Lights and Onan and a wet exhaust system.  The NL’s have a smaller form factor and 2 of them will fit in the space that will be freed up when one old gen. set is removed. 

Power on board is currently provided by two Deutz 350 HP gen sets (2x 140 KVA), providing both 380V/3-phase AC as well as DC for the bow thruster. There’s also a 190 HP “port” generator.

We plan to remove one gen. set and replace them by 2 smaller ONAN (Cummings) or Westerbeke’s silent gen. sets (probably 40 KVA each) and get rid of the port generator. We’ll also add a 18 KVA ASEA Power converter to supply power to a 110V/50 Hz power grid. This way, we can buy local appliances that work on 60 Hz and guests will be able to bring their gear from home and plug in without having to mess with converters.

Add to this the MultiPlus system from Victron Energy – more on this later and we getting a very flexible and efficient power management system.