Did some 12 volt electrical system upgrades this year.
The addition of the tiller-pilot's extra power draw also meant the battery storage and solar charging system needed increased efficiency to keep up with increased power demands.
Installed two LED dome lights in the cabin. One for the forepeak stowage area and another above the galley area. Both lights also have integral "red LED" night-vision switches too. They run cool, very bright and consume about 10% of the power that than the two original incandescent dome lights use.
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| Forepeak LED dome light |
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| Galley area LED dome light |
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| Galley LED dome, stainless body, ply backing. |
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| Forepeak LED dome, plastic body, ply backing. |
The LED dome lights have 10mm plywood backing pads as i didn't want to screw into the cored fiberglass deck (could leak/rot etc). The pads have silastic sealant holding them onto the fibreglass and the dome lights screwed into the plywood.
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| LED dome lights in red "night vision" mode (old domes still on bulkhead) |
Next was the main deep cycle battery replacement. It was 4 years old, but got discharged/damaged while away overseas in 2022. Bought another Century N70T 102 AH flooded lead acid, made in Qld ("Anaconda" on special/ club price) It has 6 separate screw on cell filler caps which are larger and easier to see inside to check plates condition. It's dimensions are a couple cm thinner and a bit longer than the old battery (same height) and it fits into the old spot ok.
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| New battery in sailing postion, clamped down. |
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| New battery (top) old one (below) |
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| New battery in shore maintenance position (electrolyte top up) |
The solar recharging needed an upgrade, to pump more juice into the battery faster than before. So bought a 40W mono-crystaline solar PV panel from Bunnings. Found a 3m solar power lead with matching fittings at Supercheap auto. Added a watt meter with anderson plugs from Tentworld.
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| Re-arranged electrical cabinet |
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| 40W solar panel stowage, with power lead |
The core of the system is a kings MPPT 20A solar charge controller from 4WD supercenter. This reletively new (to me) type of controller can output about 50% more juice than the ageing PWM type controller aboard. Once hooked up about 2-3amps at 14 volts were going into the battery at about 2pm (similar performance to my 240v shore power smart-charger on "medium" setting) Not being too electrically minded, hope it does the job.
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MPPT solar controller
 | Solar charging battery
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The problem was the MPPT controllers dimensions were reletively huge. Which required an enlargement of ply backing board area inside the electrical cabinet. This inturn required moving the master switch and lenghening/re-doing/ using some heavier sized wires etc.
Learnt how to use my very old multimeter in the process. (Installed a new 9v battery to it got it going again.) Then u-tube tutes to learn it's correct usage. It was needed to re-use/identify/check continuity of some old wires going to the forecabin (they were not color coded correctly. red=positive, black=negative) saved ripping everything out and starting from scratch. Used the old "steaming light" wires, that once went through the deck and lit up on the mast (removed it long ago, as bad for the boat cover tarp chafe), now these wires light up the forepeak LED dome light.
The 3 gang switch/fuse board remained inplace. Just added the LED dome lights circuit to it (separate from the old incandescent dome light circuit).
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Fuse board and watt meter
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