My wife and I have been casting around for another boat for a while now, we have seen a few we like very much but until we make a final choice I continue to look at some of the equipment that doubtless we will have to install. The stuff that seems to go out of date the fastest is the electronics and it is quite interesting to take a look at even 15 year old boats and notice how far things have progressed in that very short amount of time.
Unless you really want to rough it a generator seems almost essential for running all those on board systems. Many of the boats that we have looked at have 10KVA generators which will certainly provide power and more for anything that we are ever likely to need but they can be noisy and running a generator of that size simply to charge batteries is very inefficient. I was pondering on this very subject a couple of days ago when today a press release dropped into my in box about this little beastie.
I have yet to see this in the flesh as it were but basically this could be the answer to my problems.
It's called the Whisper Gen and it's made in New Zealand. At first glance it looks just like a small diesel generator of the Fischer Panda ilk but it is in fact a Stirling engine driving a 800 watt dc generator. That might seem rather small but the manufacturers don't claim this will drive 120 volt appliances directly rather that the generator, working at optimum capacity will charge batteries from which the load is drawn via an inverter. The website gives all the details and the videos on the site provide a good explanation of the technology. What I really like is that when running it is very quiet, weighes only 195 lbs and uses a pint of diesel an hour. Oh and I almost forgot you also get a ton of hot water which you can use for cabin heating or domestic hot water.
More to follow on the Whisper Gen in due course.
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