I’ve got #96 with MasterVolt with a ChargeMaster Plus 24/110-2 on it. 5 months past the warranty, it fried last night while on the hard in Trinidad.
Would anyone know if I need to replace this with the same since the rest of the boat is MasterVolt, or could I replace it with the same Victron charger?
I don’t know how the ChargeMaster is integrated with system monitoring, but if it isn’t, or if it doesn’t matter, I would just go with a Victron Skylia-i 100A charger. It does 2 battery banks, but only charges the 2nd at 4A. And, it’s less than 1/2 of the price of the ChargeMaster.
Why would I only want the second to be charged at 4amps? And not full load?
It’s there to charge the starter battery.
Hi Don, as you can imagine I have recently done a lot of research and learning in this area!
Replacing with the same model of ChargeMaster will restore a fully integrated system - the various Mastervolt items are networked and the BMS in the batteries uses this network to control the charging - and importantly stop charging when the batteries are full. They also talk to CZone for monitoring.
I believe it would be possible to move to a Victron charger but you would probably also need to implement a new Mastervolt Digital AC unit and get it programmed to be able to send a signal to the Victron “Allow to Charge” input. You would also lose the CZone monitoring of the charger.
Geoff is quite right, in terms of charging power the Victron Skyla-i has an option with similar charging power (100A) - but you would lose the ability to be able to charge from both 120V & 230V. I don’t know if that is important to you but it was a feature I definitely wanted. We ended up installing 3 x Victron PHOENIX SMART IP43 CHARGER 24/25(1+1) 120-240V which gives us 75A charge capability from either 120v or 230v and some redundancy if one of them fails.
If you have an isolation transformer (we don’t) then the voltage input challenge is solved by that.
How quickly you need to charge batteries and therefore the size of the charger does depend a little on the usage of the boat, do you normally live at anchor and only plug in for extended periods when you leave the boat? If so it doesn’t matter so much how quickly it charges… Or - do you move from marina to marina expecting a quick charge overnight and be fully topped up and ready to go again next morning? (Remember the first 18-20A will be used just running the boats systems whist charging.)
As to the secondary 4A charge circuit, that is intended for a trickle charge to an engine start battery. However, this will be 24v (because the main unit is 24v) so will not be able to charge the 12v engine batteries on our boats.
In my opinion, Mastervolt and Victron systems are not easily inter-operable.
In your scenario I would just keep my life simple and replace with Mastervolt.
Thanks Ian, since I’ve not had the “pleasure” of digging anywhere as deep as you have, and am sure there is limited knowledge of companies to do the work here to make it work correctly…simpler would be better. They have a guy looking at the circuit board to see if there is anything that can be replace, but sure I’ll be ordering a replacement unit in the next day.
Hi Don, I’m assuming you are still in Trinidad.
The best contact I have there for a Marine Electrician that might be able to do a fix is…
Dennis @ Goodwood marine.
goodwoodmarinett@gmail.com
Goodwood Marine Limited
Marine Electronic Provider & Specialist
Crews Inn Marina
Point Gourde
Chaguaramas
Trinidad, W.I.
Website: http://www.goodwoodmarine.com
Contact: Tayna: +1-868-361-1264 (Cell) | Dennis: +1-868-356-2839 (Cell/Whatsapp)
Thanks Ian, just out a query out to them to see about cost and time frame. Thanks😀
Not that it matters, but I believe that the 4A circuit on the Skylia is 12v.
