Should Your Boat’s DC Electrical System Be 12 or 24 Volt?—Part 2

January 26, 2021December 17, 2020 by John Harries

I like Victron gear a lot, particularly when we start thinking about household-type loads running off batteries.

In Part 1 we learned that it was inefficient, and often impossible, as well as potentially dangerous, to supply the high-load equipment, that so many cruisers seem to want, with a 12-volt system, regardless of the size of the battery bank, since the cabling and fuses simply won't support it. And, further, that the solution to this problem is either to forgo all very high-current (amperage) gear, or select a boat with a 24-volt system—there are no other good options. So let's look at that:

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Next: Q&A—Are Battery Desulphators a Good Idea?

Previous: Should Your Boat’s DC Electrical System Be 12 or 24 Volt?—Part 1

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John was born and brought up in Bermuda and started sailing as a child, racing locally and offshore before turning to cruising. He has sailed over 100,000 miles, most of it on his McCurdy & Rhodes 56, Morgan's Cloud, including eight ocean races to Bermuda, culminating in winning his class twice in the Newport Bermuda Race. He has skippered a series of voyages in the North Atlantic, the majority of which have been to the high latitudes. John has been helping others go voyaging by sharing his experience for twenty years, first in yachting magazines and, for the last 18 years, as co-editor/publisher of AAC.