Help me understand Shore Power

[Dsanduril]

[QUOTE=OS2Dude;3412160]

Originally Posted by OS2Dude

..... Do not just take the word of a yard worker because that is what they've always done, or anyone else for that matter. Even a licenced land electrician likely doen not know the nuances involved in marine electrical circuits. [NO, I am not one, so 'Trust but Verify']

And even more so when it comes to the nuances of a boat from one continent using electrical power from the other. These cases are relatively rare and few yard electricians on either continent are familiar with how the other side works. Despite all our talk here on CF the market for globetrotting installations and conversions isn’t that large in the overall boating market.

[Muaddib1116]

Thanks guys. I should have been more clear at the beginning, the work has been done by a certified marine electrician at a reputable yard in Rhode Island. I'm not really concerned that they did the wrong thing, I just want to have a better idea of what they did and how it will interface with American shore power and potentially European shore power.

The yard is crazy busy these days, so I haven't had a chance to talk to the electrician about what he did yet, but I thought I should try to wrap my head around as much of this stuff as I could before that conversation, so that I could get more out of the questions I ask him. Hopefully I'll get some time with him this week.

Is there a specific thing I should look for that would tell me if the boat was originally set up for 32A or 64A European shore power? Maybe look at what the rating on the transformer is? I figure if it was setup for 64A service, then having the new breaker/inlet be 50A should be safe, but if it was wired for 32A service, I need to make sure the electrician checked that the downstream system (wiring, isolation transformer, masterswitch, etc.) is adequate.

Right now, the things I want to ask about are:
- How the inlet is wired into the Blue Sea breaker box and how that is then wired into the existing boat wiring.
- If the downstream system (wiring, isolation transformer, masterswitch, etc.) is rated for 50A service.
- Should there be a breaker somewhere after the isolation transformer as well.
- How he thinks the AC units and Laundry machine will react to 60hz power.
- How he would advise hooking up to European shore power in the future.




On a slightly separate note, I thought about switching to a Smartplug. The cost of swapping the Marinco plug for a Smartplug is not that much, in relation to the cost of having the electrician do this work. The reason I didn't, was that I was thinking that with a normal style cable, I could buy a 50ft and 25ft cable, that I could link together when going bow-in to a slip, rather than dealing with a 75ft cable. Is that kosher? Smartplug would not allow that.

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by Muaddib1116

Thanks guys. I should have been more clear at the beginning, the work has been done by a certified marine electrician at a reputable yard in Rhode Island. I'm not really concerned that they did the wrong thing, I just want to have a better idea of what they did and how it will interface with American shore power and potentially European shore power.

The yard is crazy busy these days, so I haven't had a chance to talk to the electrician about what he did yet, but I thought I should try to wrap my head around as much of this stuff as I could before that conversation, so that I could get more out of the questions I ask him. Hopefully I'll get some time with him this week.

Is there a specific thing I should look for that would tell me if the boat was originally set up for 32A or 64A European shore power? Maybe look at what the rating on the transformer is? I figure if it was setup for 64A service, then having the new breaker/inlet be 50A should be safe, but if it was wired for 32A service, I need to make sure the electrician checked that the downstream system (wiring, isolation transformer, masterswitch, etc.) is adequate.

Right now, the things I want to ask about are:
- How the inlet is wired into the Blue Sea breaker box and how that is then wired into the existing boat wiring.
- If the downstream system (wiring, isolation transformer, masterswitch, etc.) is rated for 50A service.
- Should there be a breaker somewhere after the isolation transformer as well.
- How he thinks the AC units and Laundry machine will react to 60hz power.
- How he would advise hooking up to European shore power in the future.




On a slightly separate note, I thought about switching to a Smartplug. The cost of swapping the Marinco plug for a Smartplug is not that much, in relation to the cost of having the electrician do this work. The reason I didn't, was that I was thinking that with a normal style cable, I could buy a 50ft and 25ft cable, that I could link together when going bow-in to a slip, rather than dealing with a 75ft cable. Is that kosher? Smartplug would not allow that.

Of course they do.. just buy 50’ and 25’ Smartplug cables, plus some adapters for whatever you expect to connect to.

I think you had a 7kW transformer so 32A

[Muaddib1116]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

Of course they do.. just buy 50’ and 25’ Smartplug cables, plus some adapters for whatever you expect to connect to.

I'm pretty sure the smartplug side of a Smartplug cable won't plug into the dock side (50A 125/250V) of a Smartplug cable. They look nothing alike. What am I missing?

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

I think you had a 7kW transformer so 32A

Is this based off of the equipment I listed? If that's the case, I really need to check with the electrician about it. It would make sense it was something along that, since my generator is an 8kW. Does that mean my generator should be able to run all of that at the same time (AC's, laundry, watermaker, chargers, etc.)? I don't have much experience with my generator, and I was only running two things simultaneously (2 battery chargers, or 1 charger and watermaker). How would I know if I'm running too much? What happens when you overload a generator?

[Muaddib1116]

Oh, I feel dumb. You mean getting the cables with the smartplug on each end, and then a pigtail adapter for the dock.

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by Muaddib1116

Oh, I feel dumb. You mean getting the cables with the smartplug on each end, and then a pigtail adapter for the dock.

Exactly, Smartplug sells these. I bought one of their 50’ cables on a special like black Friday and really like it. The orange color may be not so much but I don’t care

All that said, the US 240/120 50A connectors aren’t that bad... much better than the 30A connectors. I went for Smartplug as I had to buy new but I wouldn’t replace a 50A inlet that’s fine with a new Smartplug inlet.

I have both 30A and 50A Smartplug inlets. The 30A was rather old and the plug had it’s strain relief parts falling apart. I discovered the new plugs were improved and asked Smartplug about it on Facebook... they immediately sent me a kit to refurbish my plug with their new style strain relief and I received in within days, all for free. Good service

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by Muaddib1116

I'm pretty sure the smartplug side of a Smartplug cable won't plug into the dock side (50A 125/250V) of a Smartplug cable. They look nothing alike. What am I missing?

Is this based off of the equipment I listed? If that's the case, I really need to check with the electrician about it. It would make sense it was something along that, since my generator is an 8kW. Does that mean my generator should be able to run all of that at the same time (AC's, laundry, watermaker, chargers, etc.)? I don't have much experience with my generator, and I was only running two things simultaneously (2 battery chargers, or 1 charger and watermaker). How would I know if I'm running too much? What happens when you overload a generator?

For your shore power: most boats are 230V 16A, but I’m told bigger boats do actually have the 32A and Mediterranean marinas actually have the 32A shore power connections available. I haven’t heard of 64A ones.. but they do have the red connectors which are 3-phase 380V.
So I think you had 32A but your transformer will tell.

[sailcrazy]

Our boat is similar to yours....European/Asia wiring (230v,50Hz, 3-wire). We bought her in Singapore, sailed Asia for 11+years, the 4 in the Medd, and now 7+ in the Caribb. When we sailed in the Medd, or Asia, it was no issue at all...but when we got to the Caribb and US power-we had issues. Note that Euro power is 3-wire(hot, neutral, and ground); US power is 240v 4-wire(2 hots, neutral and ground; 240v between the hots, 110v between either hot and neutral); or if 110v then it's 3 wire). After a lot of struggle, we finally solved our problem. We installed a Victron auto-sensing isolation transformer, and a new shorepower inlet(110v,50 amp, 3-wire,not 4-wire), and new feed wires from the shorepower inlet to the transformer. And I made a 230v shorepower cord if/when we go to a marina with 230v power(euro plug on one end, 110v, 50amp plug on the other). If we are at a US power marina, we use a standard shorepower cord, plug in, the transformer auto senses the 110v and steps it up to 230v, and feeds our AC distribution accordingly. We do need to pay attention, though, as the 30 amp marina outlet limits us to 17 amps at 230v. If we go to a Euro power marina, I use the Euro shorepower cord, plug in, the transformer senses 230v, and just passes it thru. We do have a couple of 110v appliances on the boat, and I've wired in a 230v/110v transformer and a handful of 110v outlets just for those. The m/w, toaster, elect toothbrushes, the aircons, the elect galley, batt chgr, etc don't seem to have an issue with the 50Hz/60Hz difference ... they all run just fine, and have now for 6+ years! I should note...we don't spend a lot of time in marinas, and when we're on anchor we use our genset(230v, 50 Hz....3-wire).

[Rainman]

Originally Posted by Dsanduril

With the caveat that the system is unseen and should have a bit of proper design....


That means the boat works pretty much as it always has and leaves you with the frequency question. The water heater won’t care, resistance elements don’t care about frequency. That leaves the AC, watermaker, and the washer. Those will have motors that will spin at 120% of rated speed. See this article for the considerations on switching motor frequency. Can you run them off the inverter rather than shore power (or at least washer and watermaker)? And just use shore power for battery chargers and water heating? That would be cleanest. If not then those devices would take very specific investigation.

Nice article. If it helps, we put together a slightly shorter version of the voltage/frequency related issues for our AC watermakers. My guess is that this applies to most AC watermaker brands.

https://www.rainmandesal.com/voltage...an-watermaker/

[Muaddib1116]

I'm at my boat doing some work, and I took a closer look at the back of the 50A 125/250 inlet and how it is wired to the ELCI box. The back of the inlet has 4 cable clamps: X, Y, W, Ground. A yellow wire with a green stripe is wired into the Ground clamp. A black wire is in the X clamp. A blue wire is in the W clamp. The Y clamp is empty. So the electrician has 3 wires going into the breaker box and presumably 3 wires coming out. ( I don't want to open up the back of the breaker box at this point. )

So if the X and W are the boys and the Y is the neutral, then there's 250V at 50A going into the breaker box and then into the isolation transformer. If the W is neutral, then there's 50A of 125V going into the breaker box. I can't seem to find a source that identifies the X, Y, and W.

[Muaddib1116]

I found some paperwork that identifies my isolation transformer as a Mastervolt Ivet 6.0, which I think is a 6kW transformer. So the most it should be fed is 25A of 240V.

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by Muaddib1116

I'm at my boat doing some work, and I took a closer look at the back of the 50A 125/250 inlet and how it is wired to the ELCI box. The back of the inlet has 4 cable clamps: X, Y, W, Ground. A yellow wire with a green stripe is wired into the Ground clamp. A black wire is in the X clamp. A blue wire is in the W clamp. The Y clamp is empty. So the electrician has 3 wires going into the breaker box and presumably 3 wires coming out. ( I don't want to open up the back of the breaker box at this point. )

So if the X and W are the boys and the Y is the neutral, then there's 250V at 50A going into the breaker box and then into the isolation transformer. If the W is neutral, then there's 50A of 125V going into the breaker box. I can't seem to find a source that identifies the X, Y, and W.

Something is wrong. The inlet should have color coded terminals. Blue conductor doesn’t sound right either. I think they used the original wires and the one that is black is actually brown.

[Muaddib1116]

I assume the wiring is the original. The black could very well have been brown. Google seems to say that the European standard is blue, brown, and yellow/green stripe, so I think it must be brown instead of black.

As far as the plug, I couldn't see any color coding, but I'll take a closer look tomorrow with a flashlight. I was focused on the molded in letters next to each wire clamp. If this isn't the Marinco standard, it's possible that the yard down in NC where I bought the boat didn't replace the whole inlet, just the inner plug core (or whatever that's called), and didn't use a Marinco part.

I'll try to take a voltage reading across the brown and blue wires. If it's 240V, then it's a 50 amp service. It seems like I need to add a question about the breaker to my list for the electrician; should it be a 25amp breaker instead of a 50amp to protect the isolation transformer and all the equipment down stream.

[laird]

It's highly unlikely that you will find a 64A supply in a European marina , and unless you are a industrial vessel 400v three phase is a no no

The max that you will be offered is 32a at 200 to 220 v and it will be at 50Hz , most likely it will be 16A supply ,the colour coding is brown (live) blue (neutral) and green/yellow earth ,if it's is an older installation in the UK , the cloud coding will be red (live) black (neutral) and solid green as earth

We only use 110v on building sites here in the UK

The difference in the HZ. Will cause problems ,the electrician may have changed the incoming transformer unit ,but generally speaking European electrical components will not work with USA equipment and vise versa ,so the incoming transformer would have to be changed

I can a fan from the US here in the UK using a 110 transformer , it can for a while then died ,the difference in the frequency (HZ) killed it

[Muaddib1116]

Thanks Laird, I only mentioned the 64A service because that's one of the options that I found while googling. Further searching and comments here indicate it is exceedingly rare.

The only systems that will be affected by the frequency change are my Air Conditioners (if run off of shore power and not my generator) and my Laundry (if run off of shore power and not my generator or inverter, but if it runs off the inverter well then I'll probably just do that). The battery chargers can run off either frequency and my waterheater doesn't care about it. The watermaker might have issues, but I don't think I'll ever run it at the dock off of shore power. I am looking for manuals for the AC's and Laundry to see what's what.