There's so much to enjoy in the amazing Western Cape and Cape Town area! We've managed to become foodies and wino's in the regions of Stellenbosch, Franschoek and Paarl. And I've beome hooked on two red wines, a red pinoage, called 'Chocolate Block' and a merlot call'Misha'. Its locally made of course and we have recently stocked the bilges with it figuring we wont get such great wines at this price for some time. I've mostly been a white wine person before this but CB had changed that! We've also toured up and down the Garden Route up to Plattenburg taking in the magnificent scenes along the coastal roads, the flat arid lands of Karboo and their ostriches, historical sites, windy gorges, museums, caves, an animal retirement home, friendly B&B's, glorious wine estates, etc. It's been great fun and with the Rand at a historical low against most major currencies, offers a great bargain.

In Richards Bay I installed the Watt & Sea hydrogenerator but haven't had a chance to run it up until the LiFePO4 batteries were installed as the dedicated charger is configured for the lithium input amperages. I engaged C-Dynamics Cape Town, an authorized MasterVolt dealer, to supply the battery system components, technical interfacing and the installation/commissioning services of Steve Outen, the marine electrical tech. Both C-Dynamics and Steven did a great job and gets high kudos.

Removing the six existing batteries was easy enough, but heavy going, and Steven checked these and sure enough, they were on their last legs. On the first day we had the Mastervolt MLI Ultra 5000's (2x 360Ahrs) installed (what a weight saving!) along with a new DC distribution unit, 3x stop/safety relays and a new shunt. We also reinstalled the solar and hydrogenerator MPPT chargers. The following day the Mastervolt Chargemaster 12V/100 (new) was installed in the engine room, replacing the Cristec 60A charger, and all new cables run. Connections were all made up including to the Mastervolt EasyView BMS (existing) and Mastervolt Combi Inverter (2000W; existing). Following confirmation that all the wiring was correctly installed and connected the commissioning commenced. A software interface system was also installed (MasterAdjust) onto my PC that allows a complete overview of the house battery system and adjustment if needed. With a wifi connection I'm also able to receive real-time support from MasterVolt Netherlands or C-Dynamics including firmware updates.

Steven applied a systematic startup approach and all check-out OK. We have lots of DC power! Now we'll spend the rest of days in Simons Town on the house batteries and exercise some of the stop-events and alarms ensuring all is up to spec.

The next part is to re-program my mind! Monitoring and maintaining LiFePO4 batteries are very different from lead acid types. For the most part, the MasterVolt system is self-contained where all integrated tasks for cell balancing, charging, discharging, alarms are optimally and automatically performed but I still need to completely understand it - Murphy lives around the corner! It will take a few weeks of monitoring and re-learning.

Our primary sources of charge are the Sunpower 990W/70A solar modules and the Watt&Sea 300W hydrogenerator. The secondary charge sources are the Genset/new 100A battery charger and two engine alternators (switched). The existing Valeo alternators haven't remote voltage regulators that would allow output voltage adjustments to be made for the LiFePO4 battery charging, thus we installed a manual switch allowing them to charge to the house batteries if needed. In this case, should any of the above charge sources fail, I'm able to switch on the engines/alternators to charge the house batteries, for say an hour, and then switch them off thus maintaining the integrity of the alternators and preventing them from burning up. I may consider upgrading the alternators at a later date.

We've maintained the emergency cross-overs allowing the house batts to supply to the engine starters if needed. The engines and genset have their own independent batteries and chargers.

What Matervolt says about the advantages of Lithium Ion batteries:

"Lithium Ion is the battery technology of today. Do you want to be the fastest or best performing? Do you want to save energy or burn fuel? Do you want your investment to last longer? Do you want to be ‘out there’ longest without getting anxious about your energy? Then Lithium Ion is your choice of batteries. A few of its additional features include:

Significant usable energy
Space and weight savings up to 70 %.
Three times the lifespan of traditional batteries (2000 cycles).
Extremely fast charging and discharging.
High efficiency: not wasting energy.
Safe operation.
Safest Lithium Ion technology available

Just received some good news on where my old batteries went. There is an older gentleman with a chronic bronchial condition who needs a 220V ventilator run 24/7 to keep him going. The area that he lives in has quite a few power cuts and he near has a heart attack each time his ventilator goes off. Steven will use these batteries and connect them to a solar module with and automatic switching system that will kick-in when the AC power goes off.

We are now greener! Good news all around!