The Death and Rebirth of the Marine Generator which nobody noticed...

Elight 44 takes shape and we have one 2025 delivery slot available © Nova Luxe Yachts

The groundwork for the death of the marine generator was essentially done by Nigel Caldwell at Integral systems about 10 years ago. Prior to this, the alternator on a motor was really an after thought. Integral essentially proved we can get a lot more power from the motor, convert that to electricity and provide a significant amount of power to supply house batteries. This is now fairly common and all newer motors have better alternators and they are often so good, owners prefer to fire up the diesel motors instead of a separate generator to power the house bank. Diesel generator on ICE boats now obsolete.

Next, new fangled electric motors entered the market. Battery capacity is good and can last a day but for multiple days an additional power source is necessary. Solar helps but for long passage under motor, your really looking at the generator output, and what that translates to power should be your slow cruise speed, continuous speed, whatever you want to call it. The need for a marine generator is reborn.

Hydrogen options are bobbing around as a 'clean' diesel generator alternative but at 10x the price and really no locations to fuel up, Nova Luxe is fairly certain it will not gain widespread adoption. According to this article, at 700 bar, hydrogen has 1.36 kwh/liter and lithium is currently at.71. But CATL has already doubled this energy density and units will be available to the general public in a few years. That plus a myriad of other factors essentially make hydrogen a non starter and I think the only people pushing hydrogen at this time is big oil.

But what if you really want to be green? Well diesel generators especially the older design, non-turbo naturally aspirated versions already have the ability to burn HVO. Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil can be burned in lieu of diesel and this is generally available for delivery around the world. So with your run of the mill diesel generator, you can now be green. Or, if your in a location without green fuels, you fill up and use the yacht like everyone else does.

The final question is; Are the AC generators of yesteryear the same ones we need in the future or will DC generators be more useful? I have flipflopped on this point and am now leaning towards, the AC generators of the past are the ones we need in the future. I will caveat this with by saying other people in the electrification business who's opinion I highly value are on the side and believe a DC generator, is the generator of the future.

To get to the bottom of which is better we need to understand that a true DC generator doesn't really exist. All of the DC generators I have come across are in fact AC motors that use a rectifier to create Direct Current from Alternating Current voltage. The cost, size and weight of this rectifier ultimately determines if it's a good idea or bad idea.

Does your boat accept shore power? If so, you are going to need a unit or multiple units that perform like the Victron Quattro or Multiplus. Those are inverters as well as chargers. They convert the AC shore power to DC power and charge your batteries or they can transform your DC power from the batteries and provide AC power. You need this unit to accept shore power, why not also use it to convert the AC power from the generator to DC power?

Ultimately, the devil is in the details and certain cases may warrant the need for a DC generator. But for the majority of cases, an AC generator will be the generator of the future. How were using them will change but luckily for the suppliers; the death and rebirth of their product was so quick, no one ever noticed.