Way back, when computers were young (me too), I was a technician keeping the temperamental mainframes of the time running…most of the time…sorta…OK, we considered 90% up-time a win.
Yup, the things broke down a lot! But one thing I never had trouble with were the power supplies and conductors that passed hundreds of amps at just 5 volts—you think, low voltage coupled with high current is a problem on boats!
No overheating contacts, no poorly seated lugs, no hot wires, no nothing…not ever.
Why? Because all the components, both current-producing and -consuming, were rack mounted.
Racks With Backplanes Are Better
That said, it’s not the rack that was the only secret of this reliability, but rather that the current passed through mainly solid conductors—copper bars if memory serves—rigidly attached to the backplane.
Now I’m not an electrical engineer, but even so I think we can say with confidence that rack-mounted backplane systems are intrinsically more reliable than typical sailboat systems where components are spread all over the place and then connected together with flexible cables, each of which must be custom built on site, with all the attendant opportunities for the installer to screw up—heck, just crimping a lug to pass several hundred amps reliably is a non-trivial skill.
The key to making this a commercial success will be standardization.
If it is a proprietary system that no other vendor can interface with, then they will have to ramp up with a tremendous variety of equipment very quickly, and support it well; if not then I suspect it will see limited success.
If it is a standardized but open system that other vendors can extend with equipment the original vendor does not make, then it may have a decent chance.
I am a big fan of their AC architecture. Shorepower always goes to the charger, never anywhere else; onboard loads are always powered by the inverter; the generator switches between running in parallel with the inverter (which seems to automatically clean up variations in the generator’s waveform) when it’s needed, or dumping power into the batteries when it’s underloaded.
Modules that are field swappable by minimally-skilled staff could be a lot easier to maintain & repair than we have come to expect from other vendors.
(Also, I sincerely hope that their electrical engineers are sharper than the website developers, because that website is…. painful.)
Hi Mat,
Hum, I hear you on how great a rack standard would be, but I’m betting it won’t happen. Could be wrong, but I can’t see the that other vendors would sign on, just too tempting to stay proprietary. Silly, I know, but the way of the marine industry for decades.
I’m also not at all sure that becoming a standard is required for the company to make it. Because of the modular architecture all they have to get working reliably is four products: the rack, inverter, battery pack, charger. Installers can use Victron for monitoring, Wakespeed for alternator regulation, etc. They really don’t need anything else on the rack to succeeded. Bigger system? Just add modules.
Not easy, I know, but contrast that to the nightmare product mix that a company like Victron or Mastervolt must maintain.
The other thing to take into account is that NZ is a hot bed of innovative high end boat building. They can build a core business just on the home (and Australian) boat building market and then expand from there. They might also be getting funding from that industry, or maybe an NZ innovation fund.
Looks like the people have a track record too: https://hikoterra.com/about
I totally agree on running all the AC through the charger. So cool.
On the web site, I agree, but in their defence, that’s what “sexy” web design looks like these days.
Looks like nice stuff. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head about space. I can imagine this being very appealing to builders of boats who can design in a dedicated space for this system, it would be cool to have everything in one cupboard. For the retro fit market where we’re used to stashing the batteries as low down as possible and scattering the other boxes around the boat wherever there is space I can’t see how this is going to work.
Is the new boat market large enough to sustain this concept? I have no idea. I would imagine Victron sell more gear to boat owners/electricians than boat builders but that’s just a guess.
Incidentally if they could have an alternator regulator built into one of their boxes the whole thing would feel a lot more plug and play. I guess there’s a good reason why they don’t want to do that.
Hi Pete ,
I agree on space, although I think there are a lot of boats of say 50′ and up that could fit one during a refit.
On the alternator controller, I think they are making a smart call by not getting into that, or a solar controller. To me the primary benefit of the system is handling high power cabling and fusing in a better way. So having to engineer and support those additional components, which do not require high current wiring, would be a distraction from getting the thing out the door. Also different people will want different controllers. For example a twin engine boat will need two.
If this architecture were picked up by the terrestrial solar market that could give them sustainable volume.
The marine market alone can’t sustain this product. But the marine, RV, and specialty vehicle markets combined probably can. If they can get one set of hardware to meet all the relevant standards for all of those sectors, then they might be able to reach the necessary economies of scale for it to work.
The foolproof vertical-rack modular architecture is absolutely ideal for RVs, which have all the same house battery issues we do but with the added complication of needing practically all of the assembly work to be done by a low-skill, high-turnover, high-attrition workforce.
It’s also ideal for an ambulance, mobile command truck, airport service vehicle, heavy-machinery maintenance truck, etc. where the cost of downtime is measured in $1000 increments and being able to pop a hatch, unclip the dead module, plug in the new module, and send the truck back out on the road in 15 minutes is a massive advantage over having the truck take up a shop bay for half the day.
I can see IT operators jumping on it as well, if it’s offered to them. I would absolutely buy this for my company’s server room. Bolt it to the wall behind the servers, run the 208V mains feed to its shorepower input, rig it with dual redundant chargers and inverters, connect the automated generator control to the Generac….. presto, a nice clean double-conversion UPS with automatic transfer switch at a lot less hassle than assembling the same from parts.