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David makes a good point for radar and I would never counsel against it but an almost equally important system is a "full duplex" AIS. Some VHFs and stand-alone "receive only" AIS units are out there but if everyone does this then only required vessels (commercial vessels) will be squawking...

Ken: I too am a retired engineer and a numbers guy. Much as I love the "freedom" my gen-set and 1000 AH batteries now give me, the desire for ice cream and steaks = 2 hours of noise per day. If solar panels cut this in half then .... ROI = $1,500 / 200 cruising days of 1 hour less time...

Your RIGHT (that's wrong!) ... If your shore power's cord neutral were to break or make a bad connection, any 120 vac load onboard is going to try to find an alternate path back to the commoned up neutral / ground point on your shore power box. If the ground wire in your cord is still working...

I'm a little surprised no one suggested by the short answer might be to simply turn on every cabin light and 12 vdc fan, turn off the charger, and walk away for a day or two until the boat batteries are, in fact, dead. (You might want to turn off the refrigerator ... most have low voltage cut...

If your still looking for help re your ac volt meter reading 1/2 of its terminal voltage; here is my thoughts. Your AC volt meter likely contains a bridge rectifier (four diodes that "full wave rectify" the incoming ac to pulsing DC). If one "half" of this rectifier has gone bad (open), your...

MV Content ... Your results of 220 AH from 750 watts of panels is spot-on consistent with what I am hearing from several others on the forum. It seems 30 AH per 100 watts of panel capacity is a good gauge for sizing panels. That being an average per day, in the summer, in the Pacific NW...

SteveD ... I have spent some time reading over the data posted by the skipper of the Viking Star. It is about as much data on the subject as anyone could ever need to make choices and feel comfortable with the expected results of a Pacific NW solar panel system. My job now is only to study the...

David: I'll have read reports that solar panels can be severely impacted by shadows. Claims that 5% shadows can reduce outputs in excess of 50%. This seems odd and I'm not at all convinced that an antenna's shadow could render a whole panel nearly useless. Have you heard this or got any hard...

I am looking to install a good MPPT type solar charge controller and 300 to 600? watts of solar panels on my Pondarosa 42 "Resolute". My cruising area is Puget Sound and North into BC and hopefully SE Alaska. My cruising months are May to September. The battery loads are primarily a 3.2 Cu.Ft...