How can I run a European system (50hz 240v) in America (60hz 120v)?

[Sailing4Jesus]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

OK, so go tell 60 million Brits, 90 million Japanese, 1.2 billion Indians, plus South Africans, Australians, and assorted others, that they'd better change sides of the road and convert their entire stock of cars and trucks. Or else. Let us know how you get on


Then, after your success with that, then tell 300 million U.S. Americans, plus Canadians, Mexicans, and Japanese, that they need to get rid of their inferior 110v power systems and get with the program -- toss all their electrical gear out, overhaul their entire electrical power distribution systems nationwide, and go to 230v/50 cycle power.


Great plan!

Reread my comments. I neither lifted up one system above another. I merely stated that one would think after so many years, that the entire world would have adopted ONE SYSTEM for the entire world. However, on the other hand The United Nations cannot even make up their minds if they need to Pee or not. So all member nations would save many billions if we abolished The Worthless United Nations, as they are a worthless as tits on a boar hog.

Senior Chief

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by boom23

I do not know of a MultiPlus that will make 60Hz out of 50Hz and vice-versa...

The MultiPlus is an Inverter & Charger. Chargers generally accept 50 & 60Hz. Inverters are usually preset on the output frequency. Maybe, that is what you mean.

I had a MultiPlus fail on me and I was out of the Charger and Inverter. Since then, I prefer to have individual devices. It is less of a hit when they fail.

Re-read my comments and study the schematic. There’s two inverter chargers, of which only one gets the shore power feed. That one will charge the battery regardless of 50/60Hz input. It’s AC outputs are not used when the boat and shore use different frequency.
The other unit does not get shore power so it starts inverting and creates either 50- or 60Hz, whatever you like and setup in it’s configuration. This is the unit that you use the output from.

The trick is that the power flows from shore power to 1st inverter/charger in charger mode, to 2nd inverter/charger in inverter mode, skipping the battery bank (because voltage from charger is higher than from battery bank).

In the AC Input diagram, the breaker for inverter 1 is on and for inverter 2 is off. I the AC distribution diagram, the rotary switch is on inverter 2.

[boom23]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

Re-read my comments and study the schematic. There’s two inverter chargers, of which only one gets the shore power feed. That one will charge the battery regardless of 50/60Hz input. It’s AC outputs are not used when the boat and shore use different frequency.
The other unit does not get shore power so it starts inverting and creates either 50- or 60Hz, whatever you like and setup in it’s configuration. This is the unit that you use the output from.

The trick is that the power flows from shore power to 1st inverter/charger in charger mode, to 2nd inverter/charger in inverter mode, skipping the battery bank (because voltage from charger is higher than from battery bank).

In the AC Input diagram, the breaker for inverter 1 is on and for inverter 2 is off. I the AC distribution diagram, the rotary switch is on inverter 2.

Got it. This makes for a more compact setup.

[SV Bacchus]

Is it even possible to change the Hz? I thought that came from the speed of the armature in the power generator.

One spins 60 times a second and the other spins 50 times a second. If that is true, and it may not be as I am a neophyte, how can those “pulses” be changed?

[john61ct]

Big mechanical devices, very expensive to do electronically. Usually cheaper to just replace the appliances.

IOW not economically practical, other than using inverters as I spelled out.

But most load devices don't care, just transforming voltage is enough.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

Nah, the best solution is to have two inverter/chargers that can take either 50Hz or 60Hz input, like Victron Multiplus 230V/50Hz which can be reprogrammed to create 240V/60Hz.

You set the inverters to what you want aboard (i.e. 60Hz) and only feed shore power to one of the two, of which you don’t use the output. The other unit will invert and that is the output you use with the other one supplying the 12/24V to the unit that inverts. This way you create your own power conversion system and gain redundancy and gain double charging power if you wish etc.

See attached schematics.

OK, but you can't invert to 60hz from the same Multiplus which is taking in shore power at 50hz, or vice versa, so the unit whose output you can't use you are simply using as a battery charger. You would need to physically disconnect the output, which I see from your schematic you can do.

So this works exactly like having one inverter/charger and one battery charger on board.


Double charging power you could have but at the expense of losing any inverting capability. Just like if you had one charger/inverter and one battery charger, and connected the charger/inverter to shore power.


So the only advantage I can see is that you have a spare inverter/charger on board, which is a good thing, having experienced two failures of Multipluses in the last 10 years. But the downside is much more complicated wiring. I do like your power bypass, which overcomes the problem of losing all AC power if your Multiplus goes down -- don't ask me how I know about this You'd better remember not to choose the wrong combination of switch positions, however.

Having two shore power inlets, one powering the Multiplus at the "home" voltage, and the other for the "strange" power, powering a Skylla, would be a much more KISS solution, with the same functionality, but only for losing the spare Multiplus. I believe I would do it that way. If the Multiplus is installed in an accessible location (not like what I have now ), then bypassing it to get back AC power in case of failure would be a 2 minute job.

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by SV Bacchus

Is it even possible to change the Hz? I thought that came from the speed of the armature in the power generator.

One spins 60 times a second and the other spins 50 times a second. If that is true, and it may not be as I am a neophyte, how can those “pulses” be changed?

What, with a generator?



My generator can be switched over to produce 8kW at 110v/60hz at 1800RPM, from its normal 6.5kW at 230v/50hz at 1500RPM. You just change the constant speed diesel governor setting and connect the generator head differently. There are instructions in my manual. With a constant speed generator, the frequency is determined by the governed engine speed.

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

OK, but you can't invert to 60hz from the same Multiplus which is taking in shore power at 50hz, or vice versa, so the unit whose output you can't use you are simply using as a battery charger. You would need to physically disconnect the output, which I see from your schematic you can do.

So this works exactly like having one inverter/charger and one battery charger on board.


Double charging power you could have but at the expense of losing any inverting capability. Just like if you had one charger/inverter and one battery charger, and connected the charger/inverter to shore power.


So the only advantage I can see is that you have a spare inverter/charger on board, which is a good thing, having experienced two failures of Multipluses in the last 10 years. But the downside is much more complicated wiring. I do like your power bypass, which overcomes the problem of losing all AC power if your Multiplus goes down -- don't ask me how I know about this You'd better remember not to choose the wrong combination of switch positions, however.

Having two shore power inlets, one powering the Multiplus at the "home" voltage, and the other for the "strange" power, powering a Skylla, would be a much more KISS solution, with the same functionality, but only for losing the spare Multiplus. I believe I would do it that way. If the Multiplus is installed in an accessible location (not like what I have now ), then bypassing it to get back AC power in case of failure would be a 2 minute job.

I know it appears that having two inverter/chargers is overkill, but if you run the scenarios, it’s not. Example: when not tied to the dock, you power both units so that battery charging on genset is twice as fast and either can be chosen as power source because it’s all the same frequency.
Also, the distribution part with the rotary switch to select the source and then the bank of breakers... you can make multiple of those. I will have two with the second one just for the 240V watermaker. That way I can run the watermaker from a different source than the rest... like the other inverter/charger. I could be running the engine as a DC power source (I can do 450A to house bank plus 80A to starter bank), feeding both inverter/chargers and can load them up to 100% without using Ah from the batteries.
Yes, the bypass is for when the SHTF

[Dockhead]

Originally Posted by s/v Jedi

I know it appears that having two inverter/chargers is overkill, but if you run the scenarios, it’s not. Example: when not tied to the dock, you power both units so that battery charging on genset is twice as fast and either can be chosen as power source because it’s all the same frequency.
Also, the distribution part with the rotary switch to select the source and then the bank of breakers... you can make multiple of those. I will have two with the second one just for the 240V watermaker. That way I can run the watermaker from a different source than the rest... like the other inverter/charger. I could be running the engine as a DC power source (I can do 450A to house bank plus 80A to starter bank), feeding both inverter/chargers and can load them up to 100% without using Ah from the batteries.
Yes, the bypass is for when the SHTF

OK, that makes sense, and it sounds like a powerful and flexible system



I think I might rather gang the charger/inverters, if I had two of them, so that the output power is pooled rather than feeding different circuits.


For my next boat I think about ganged inverter/chargers anyway because one 3000va Multiplus is not enough for electric cooking plus other AC loads. If one goes down, the other can be pretty easily reconfigured to standalone mode. Then still have the separate Skylla wired to a separate shore power inlet for "strange" power.


My next boat for sure will have lithium rather than lead batteries, and I might even convert this boat over the winter to lithium. For that you can't have too much charging capacity, so I would need to add another Multiplus or a Skylla in any case. 2 x 70 amps @ 24v would be roughly .3C for a 450 amp/hour lithium bank.

[s/v Jedi]

Originally Posted by Dockhead

OK, that makes sense, and it sounds like a powerful and flexible system



I think I might rather gang the charger/inverters, if I had two of them, so that the output power is pooled rather than feeding different circuits.


For my next boat I think about ganged inverter/chargers anyway because one 3000va Multiplus is not enough for electric cooking plus other AC loads. If one goes down, the other can be pretty easily reconfigured to standalone mode. Then still have the separate Skylla wired to a separate shore power inlet for "strange" power.


My next boat for sure will have lithium rather than lead batteries, and I might even convert this boat over the winter to lithium. For that you can't have too much charging capacity, so I would need to add another Multiplus or a Skylla in any case. 2 x 70 amps @ 24v would be roughly .3C for a 450 amp/hour lithium bank.

The parallel operation is a path of sorrow. You must have the exact same model inverter/charger of the exact same hardware revision with the exact same software version. Imagine having to buy two new units when one fails. I’ve seen it happen, couldn’t believe it

[boom23]

I've had a MultiPlus failure also. It happened after my alternator controller quit on me. I was in Fiji and there were no MultiPlus to be found. I was lucky that I had a catamaran and I could charge my batteries from the other engine...

The MultiPlus is a good product, but since the above incident I do not like combined products. When they go bad, you loose a big chunk of your setup, and it is harder to find a replacement when cruising in remote places. Two MultiPlus add redundancy though.

My current setup is simpler and very flexible. I have two chargers (60amp and 100amp) and two inverters (120V 60Hz and 230V 50Hz). Also, I can connect to 120V or 230V shore power, even in Europe where there is no shore power wiring standard. The individual components I have are easier to find and replace when they go bad.

Everything is a compromise. It depends on what is important to you.

[sailcrazy]

We have the situation you describe.....our boat was built in Asia, for Asian power(230v 3-wire, 50Hz). All was good in Asia, and in the Medd, but here in the Caribb we had "issues". We (finally) bought a Victron Auto-sensing Isolation Transformer....it works, and provides 230v output to the house, no matter what the input voltage! We either plug into a 115v US power pole or a 230v power pole(both are 3-wire). And when were away from the dock (most of the time), we use our 230v, 50Hz genset. Although we have both 50Hz(watermaker, Refer, aircons,etc) and 60Hz(microwave) equipment installed, they both seem to work just fine, with no apparent issues. Just spec your circuit wire sizes and and c/bs accordingly.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by Sailing4Jesus

Reread my comments. I neither lifted up one system above another. I merely stated that one would think after so many years, that the entire world would have adopted ONE SYSTEM for the entire world. However, on the other hand The United Nations cannot even make up their minds if they need to Pee or not. So all member nations would save many billions if we abolished The Worthless United Nations, as they are a worthless as tits on a boar hog.

Senior Chief

You implied someone has to change...so if it's not right-hand drive vehicles, it's left-hand drive countries that have to change...Tell us which one is viable and who pays for it?

[Sailing4Jesus]

Originally Posted by valhalla360

You implied someone has to change...so if it's not right-hand drive vehicles, it's left-hand drive countries that have to change...Tell us which one is viable and who pays for it?

WHO cannot be expected to pay for it because he is on second Base.

[valhalla360]

Originally Posted by Sailing4Jesus

WHO cannot be expected to pay for it because he is on second Base.

Way to dodge the issue.