BEP Voltage Sensing Relay advice

[Marine Sparky 0]

Further to that, if you remember Shazzam the Charter Boat from out of Havelock, had a Multistep charge controller on the Alternator. The Boat nearly caught Fire due to a design issue with these chargers. If they fault, they seem to fault to High charge output with the Voltage so high, it fries everything. They had to replace all the electronics and battery banks and found several areas where electronics mounted against Bulkheads had fried and burned the Bulkheads. Mark, the Marine Sparky in Havelock, refuses to install them anymore.

This sounds like the voltage regulators the BEP sold as their ER4 model. They were in fact a locally made brand, re-branded by BEP. There were an escalating series of problems with these and each modification seemed to introduce a new issue. BEP took them off the market about one year after I refused to use them any more. However, this does not justify labeling all smart regulators as troublesome. There are also other well known brands that I won't use for various reasons, but there are some very good multi stage smart regulators. One alternator repair company doesn't like smart regulators because they supposedly burn out alternators. This doesn't actually say anything about smart regulators in general, but more about the incompetence of those who carry out incorrect installations based on a lack of knowledge and/or experience.

 

A good brand smart regulator competently installed in a charging system designed by an expert who actually knows what they are doing (rather than just claiming that they do - because many don't understand how much they don't know) will give efficient and reliable service.

[Island Time 1,235]

1st, Welcome aboard!. I agree with what you say.

Some "smart regs" dont seem to me to be able to be smart - they don't have batt temp sensors, so how do they really KNOW what the batts are doing?

 

Personally I have a good smart reg, been in the boat for 15 odd years, (Amplepower Next Step, the blue one), never had a single issue. Drives a Balmar Alternator.