Malu Marine Ltd

03/10/2017

Malu Marine are pleased to advise that Nico de Graaf from Masterspars in Holland will visit Larnaca between the 10th and 15th of October.

Nico is a highly experience rigger and is accredited as an official supplier of the well known mast and boom and rigging equipment group VMG Soromap.

Please contact us either personally or by phone to make an appointment should you wish to have Nico make an on site inspection of your rigging or should you be considering upgrading any of your rigging components.

We will host an event with live demonstrations at Stravros Marina Café at
4pm on Saturday 14th October.

16/05/2016

Chris's dive boat that we completed the wiring for.

09/05/2016

8 days of the new charge EPEver Tracer 3210A solar charge controller... and 5.72 kWh put into the batteries!

http://malumarine.com/renewable-energy/Solar/Tracer-3210A

09/05/2016

We installed the new EPEver Tracer 3210A solar charge controller last weekend for testing in King Malu.

This is the first of the new MPPT charge controllers we will be selling as Malu Marine. You can buy it from our website.

We have been evaluating which MPPT controller to use and to sell and this seems the best compromise. Some are very expensive, this one comes in as a complete kit at €229.00.
I was keen to try it out, so installed it immediately. As soon as we had done so I began so see the benefits of MPPT controllers...

08:00 hours
Wind power providing 4 amps...
Sun still low providing 4 amps...

13:00 hours
Sun is full, but a little overcast... providing 10.3 amps

Now this shows the power of an MPPT controller compared to a PWM controller: We are getting 8.1 amps at 17.4 volts from the solar cells, ie a total of 140.94 watts being converted into 10.3 amps at 13.5 volts, ie a total of 139.05 watts. This is an efficiency of 98.7%. If it were a PWM controller it would convert the 8.1 amps at 17.4 volts into 8.1 amps at 13.5 volts, which would be an efficiency of 77.6%. In other words the MPPT gives you about 20% more from your solar cells!

08/05/2016

Limassol Boat Show -- Silentwind on the Comar Marine stand

08/05/2016

We installed the new EPEver Tracer 3210A solar charge controller today for testing in King Malu.

This is the first of the new MPPT charge controllers we will be selling as Malu Marine. You can buy it from our website.

We also develop our own products and we work with other manufactueres including one of the UK's premiere sailmakers, so the quality is always world standard!

01/03/2016

One of the biggest problems on sailing boats with solar panels is shading. There is so much gear that can shade the panel! These two photos illustrate it exactly. But note that we are developing flexible smaller panels... in each case there are two panels not one. Hence, in the first photo, one of the panels has 40% shaded (low output) and the other 5-10% shaded (close to full output). On the other side of the boat one of the panels is 100% shaded (almost no output) and the other 5% shaded (almost full output). If these were single large panels then they both would be significantly reduced output power.

20/02/2016

We had 4 battery banks on King Malu: Domestic, Engine Start, Navionics and Bow Thruster. We started the transition to the new distributed system today... The engine start is no longer needed (we have a totally electric drive system now) so we added it to the domestic bank. We have the Silentwind generator with 300W solar working now, so we would like to charge both Navionics and Domestic and Bow Thruster. So what we did was to merge (temporarily) the Navionics and Domestic and then use a Sterling Battery Maintainer to top up the Bow Thruster battery bank.

This is not the final solution, as I hinted at in the beginning we aim to have a distributed battery system. More of that later. Watch this space as they say!

15/02/2016

Malu Marine upgraded our Silentwind generator on our own boat King Malu this weekend to the new 'Boost' version. The Boost version delivers more power at lower speeds, which is particularly useful in the Mediterranean where we have more sun and less wind. We took out King Malu today in minimal winds. Today we had Beaufort 1-2 and although we didn't get world shattering results we were seeing the wind generator delivering power.

The charge controller also integrates solar power and we have installed 300W in six 50W panels. A large number of small panels is better for a sailing boat because the rigging often creates a shadow on the solar panels reducing the output for that panel. All the panels that are unshaded should still deliver full output. Note... remember you need Schottky diodes for each bank or you'll damage the panels that are shaded.

15/02/2016

Malu Marine upgraded our Silentwind generator on our own boat King Malu this weekend to the new 'Boost' version. The Boost version delivers more power at lower speeds, which is particularly useful in the Mediterranean where we have more sun and less wind. We took out King Malu today in minimal winds. Today we had Beaufort 1-2 and although we didn't get world shattering results we were seeing the wind generator delivering power.

The charge controller also integrates solar power and we have installed 300W in six 50W panels. A large number of small panels is better for a sailing boat because the rigging often creates a shadow on the solar panels reducing the output for that panel. All the panels that are unshaded should still deliver full output. Note... remember you need Schottky diodes for each bank or you'll damage the panels that are shaded.

(Full blog post here http://kingmalu.blogspot.com.cy/2016/02/silentwind.html)

14/02/2016

Malu Marine have been doing tests on the Webcatcher Antennas in Larnaca marina. We provide an free access point there in partnership with Cablenet.

Webcatcher has three different antenna versions: 8.5dBi, 10 dBi and 12.5 dBi. The 8.5 dBi works best in a marina close to a high Access Point, but has a more limited range. The 12.5 dBi works best long range but is more limited if you are close to the Access point on the second story or higher of a building.

08/02/2016

Silentwind now on display in Comar Marine in Nicosia. If you're in Cyprus in Nicosia, pop in to see how Silentwind really is silent!