This answers our pondering House Battery Bank: Should we go 48 volt
So we managed to get these two items from the clearance section at Energy Solutions.
The new MultiPlus II (looks like a decent upgrade from the original MultiPlus). Sized with a 48 volt, 5000 Watt inverter and a 70 amp charger. For the price of a much less powerful 48 volt charger on it’s own.
We had planned to have two smaller MultiPlus units to give some redundancy. We don’t really need that before we set off world cruising so we can wait and add a second smaller one in a few years. The feature set is amazing. For example we can have two power circuits on the boat and one of them will only be supplied if we have shorepower or a generator running. Also we can tell it the shorepower capacity and it will make sure it doesn’t overload it. It can do all kinds of clever stuff mixing shorepower, battery and solar in clever ways (that will mean that we can minimise our shorepower usage as the solar is prioritised).
The Isolation Transformer was an even bigger bargain, the case has some damage (looks like it was dropped onto one corner hard enough to bend the side and bottom panels). It can support a 32 amp 7.0kvA mains supply. It handles 230v and 120v, sorts reversed polarity and protects us from electrical currents that can cause metal fittings on the boat to corrode.
We are very much looking forward to getting these installed (might need to do some weight training to get the MultiPlus II up the ladder and it will need a very strong bulkhead to be fastened to).
Sustainable Sailing 