Jeanneau NC33

About This Project

The owner of this Jeanneau NC33 power boat contacted our team at Ocean Phase requesting major upgrades to the boat’s original electrical system to keep the vessel light weight and free from bulky components that take up room. He wanted to accommodate a new marine air conditioning unit without installing a heavy bulky generator. His vision was to run and operate the boat with a lithium ion battery bank servicing both AC and DC systems with the aid of a Victron quattro inverter charger.

To do this job, we needed to plan the installation very carefully as the equipment needed to be precisely calibrated in order to not damage the lithium batteries.
The vessel’s original house batteries were located in the forward V berth. We found that one of the two batteries had a faulty cell internally, causing the system to discharge and fail. The size of the battery bank was insufficient and needed to be removed.
Our solution was to install the lithium battery system in the master cabin, close to the centre of the vessel and its main AC and DC distribution. This kept cable runs short and prevented any voltage drop in the charging circuits.

The Victron Quattro inverter charger was mounted and programmed for the correct charge rate for the lithium ion bank with an assisted battery management system. We linked the boats 180 amp alternators through Victron Cyrix Li charge relays.

One of our main concerns was that the alternators were going to overheat under load, while the air conditioning system was running. In order to test this, we started the sea trail with the batteries at 50% state of charge to see what the system could do. While cruising the vessel for over 2 hours at different RPM’s , within 56mins the lithium bank charged to 100%. We measured the alternators temperatures periodically at certain times and recorded the highest temperature at 88 degrees, which is well under the safety specs for the Volvo Penta system.

We installed two battery protect units, one for the house switched circuits and another one for the 24hr circuits which run bilge pumps, stereo memory, Victron battery monitor and the Victron battery management system.

With the inverter running we found that with the batteries supplying the inverter and air conditioning system running, the discharge from the batteries was 63 amps. We calculated the system lasts 6-8 hours without having to run the engines. The air conditioning system can also be programmed to run to a set time and turn off.

In addition to the lithium ion setup and air conditioning the boat owner also requested a quantum radar fitted with a radar tower, and complete entertainment system including smart TV and Fusion stereo system integrated.

If you are looking to switch to lithium power and supercharge your vessel please feel free to contact us for a free consultation at info@oceanphasemarine.com.