1) Understanding your energy needs is essential to determine how much solar you need. Start by making an "energy budget". List all your consumers and their daily usage. For example, if your LED lights use 1W per bulb and you have eight bulbs on for 5 hours a day, that would be 8 Watts for 5 hours or (8x5) 40 Wh (Watt hours). I like to use kWh to keep things consistent. 40 Wh = 0.040 kWh. It's a good idea to list what you're using while at anchor and another list of what you're using while underway (for instance, you don't use your autopilot at anchor). Remember to list everything: fridge, freezer, watermaker, autopilot, nav lights, chart plotters, etc. For example, here aboard Athena, with an electric galley, fridge, freezer, watermaker, two computers, etc, we use an average of 5.5 kWh per day. 2) To give you a quick estimate, use https://globalsolaratlas.info/ to find "Global horizontal irradiation" per day for your location. Take your daily energy consumption from step 1 and divide that by the number of solar hours. In the case of Athena, located in the Caribbean, that would be 5.5kWh per day / 5 sun hours = 1.1 kW solar array. Keep in mind that this is a theoretical number that does not take into account the shading or degradation of the panels over time. Let's add 30%. 1.1 x 1.3 = 1.43 kW. You can now divide that number by the panel's Nominal Power output. In the case of Athena, our panels are 400W SunPower panels. 1430W / 400W = 3.6 panels needed to cover our 5.5 kWh per day consumption. 3) Understand that the amount of solar you can install on a small sailboat is limited by the size of the boat and heavily influenced by shading and, of course, the boat's location. The size of the panels might also be defined by the height of your stanchions or the size of an existing solar arch. Figure out where you're able and willing to install panels. That will dictate the size and number of panels. 4) Use Victron Energy's MPPT Calculator to calculate what MPPT is ideally sized for your solar panels and expected output based on location. Based on our experience in the Caribbean, the estimate provided by the guide is reasonable. https://www.victronenergy.com/mppt-calculator. Remember that it's best practice to avoid combining panels with different specs on the same MPPT. #sailboat #sailboatproject #boatwork #saillife #liveaboard #liveaboardlife #saltlife #sailing #sailingadventure #travel ingcouple #livingonaboat #solar #sailboatsolar

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La notte arriva il temporale. Era previsto d’altronde! Noi controlliamo l’ormeggio, controlliamo gli oblò e poi ci rimettiamo a letto, ma concerto privato di pioggia, cigolii e strattoni ci delizia fino alle 5 circa. Poi ci alziamo e partiamo. La navigazione in Croazia è qualcosa di magico. Adesso mi ricordo perché è così gettonata dai charter 😄 Mare piatto (al sicuro tra le isole) e destinazioni vicine la rendono molto appetibile per le vacanze in barca. Ogni tanto passa un traghetto che mi ricorda cosa siano le onde e in un attimo siamo di nuovo in oceano (😍). La Croazia è stupenda, è vero, ma io nel cuore porto l’oceano Atlantico. 💙 Eh si, ragazzi, va così! Momento nostalgia. Raggiungiamo Brgulje nel pomeriggio e concludiamo la giornata immersi in un silenzio surreale. Al tramonto Andrea delizia me e tutti i partecipanti a una diretta improvvisata con la sua musica al pianoforte. 🎹 Bello da emozionare! Noi nel frattempo, ci aggiorniamo domani. Come da un anno a questa parte 🥹 C.

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