Shore power?

Visited the boat on Sunday and found I had no shorepower. Cord is connected and solid, but no "service" light on the AC panel. Cycled the breaker, no joy.

Called the marina office and asked them to check the power pole. They called back this morning and said power at the pole is fine.

So... I'm confused.

First thought is to put a multimeter across the boat end of the cable to see if there is power coming through the cable. If no... then I guess I need a new cable.

If yes? Then there's something wrong inside the boat, and I'm not sure where to start looking. The main breaker isn't popping, it stays in the "on" position but no "service" light comes on.

Any hints?

Yes Id say get out your meter and start at the cord and then start working your way inward until you find the problem. Remember this is not a measly 12 volts your dealing with so take the appropriate precautions.
I also strongly suggest upgrading to the smart plug while your messing around in there. There are too many reasons to list here but Ill include a few links for your viewing pleasure.

http://www.ericsonyachts.org/infoexchange/entry.php?243-electric-upgrades

http://www.pbase.com/mainecruising/installing_a_smart_plug

Thanks - I had previously read Maine Sail's note on the smart-plug, if it ends up that I have a problem with my cable or input connection that's as good a reason as I need to make the change. It looks very cool.

Kinda itching to get to the boat and start testing things... In general, I think electricity is closely related to magic, anyway, so it makes me uncomfortable to know that it is disappearing somewhere between the pole and the panel and I don't know why....

Did you check the boat end cable plug and socket?

I had the same issue except the Reverse Polarity light was on one day last year. Everything on the boat appeared to be fine. The marina electrician said all was good on the shore end. He also said that the cables fail. My cable looks original, circa 1981. I unplugged the boat end and found the boat side cable socket burnt and melted just enough to arc over between the contacts. I'm lucky the cable failed like it did and did not start a fire. I now have the Smart Plug and cable and no longer run a heater in the winter. I highly recommend the Smart Plug and socket.

EDIT - Text deleted. See posts #12/13 below for old cable problems.

Also check the Service light bulb on the AC panel. Mine was burnt out when I got my boat.

Mark

A couple of months ago we had a boat in our marina that started having shore power problems. He had power for a while and then it would fail. His cord was about a year old and was in excellent-looking condition. Since we changed over most of our moorage to the newer GFI breaker outlets last year, we have had several boats with problems where the new breaker would trip regularly. At first the owners would suspect the "new fangled" electrical outlet with the GFI breaker, but after testing every other boat had an internal AC circuit problem where the ground and neutral were getting together....


Back to this situation -- the recent problem really had me puzzled. The inlet on the boat looked fine, cord looked fine, and the GFI breaker on the post seemed to test out fine... So an electrician was called in to do some trouble shooting.
He took the back cover off of the shore power inlet on the boat and found singed wiring and evidence that the wires were a tad short and had never really been attached strongly to the socket set screws... when the boat was built... about 15 years ago. :0

No fire, thanks to the GFI, but there could have been

The owner did opt to put in a Smart Plug, but even a new conventional inlet would have been a suitable repair.

So, it is indeed a matter of following the whole wiring path -- from one end all the way to the other.

Good luck,

Loren

Mystery solved.... sort of

Got to the boat this evening and started testing things. No power at the boat end of the cable. Pulled the cable from the power-pole and put the test leads into the socket on the pole itself, no power there either.

Which was odd because the marina office said that they'd sent a maintenance guy out and he said the power was working fine.

I sat there and tried to think through possibilities. Kinda glad that there wasn't power at the pole, because that meant there was (probably) nothing wrong with the boat. But it didn't make sense....

...until my next-door neighbor showed up and saw me fussing with the pole.

Turns out, he dropped the boat end of his cable in the water while preparing to leave the dock on Sunday morning. When he came in and hooked back up *his* power didn't work, so he reset the breaker on the pole, and now his was working fine. Showed me where the breakers were, and mine was tripped. Reset it, power came back on in the boat like magic.

So now I have power again. Apparently the connections are fine, cable is fine, inlet is fine, panel is fine. No sign of any overheating or shorting at either end of my cable or behind the inlet on the boat. Still not sure how *my* breaker got tripped, maybe he flipped both of them back and forth while trying to get his working, or something. There's a small worry niggling at me there a little bit, so I hung out for a while running the charger to make sure nothing tripped or got warm, and then unplugged the cable when I left for the evening. I'll keep an eye on it... but for now, things seem to be back to normal.

I think I will order one of the SmartPlug setups, though. This seems like as good a time as any to upgrade the system, and I like that the SmartPlug connector has a thermal breaker that will pop if the connection overheats. Belt and suspenders.

A new mystery?

I replaced my shore power (inlet and 50' cord) with a SmartPlug setup this evening. Fairly easy, even the holes lined up. Only interesting bit is that I had to trim the white and black conductors on the boat side a couple of inches to get to the "clean bright copper" that the SmartPlug instructions wanted me to connect to the new inlet.

It's all back together and working... maybe too well?

In the past, my batteries have been around 13.4v when fully charged.

Right now, after the charger has run for a half hour or so, they are at about 14.4v In other words, more stored electrons than I have ever seen on this boat.

-- is it possible that the new cord is so much more efficient that it is letting the charger pump more into the batteries?
-- is it possible that the new inlet is " " " " " " " " " " " " " " "
-- is it possible that the bits I cut off the conductors were causing a bunch of resistance?
-- is it possible I've done something wrong?

(that last one is usually my first instinct where electricity is concerned)

I'm on the boat, there are no signs of heat, no funny smells, no apparent signs of problems... just 7% more juice than I'm used to seeing.

Any insights?

Both my charger and my alternator charge my batteries at about 14.3 until they are charged and then the voltmeter drops to about 13.6 volts as maintenance level. Different batteries also like to be charged at different levels and smart chargers will often accommodate for that if set properly.
I don't know why the charge level increased for you, but I think 14.4 charging is not out of line, but I'm not an electrician.
Frank

Wow! You must have really done a good job wiring the inlet!

That said, you might want to look at your charger manual. A three step charger (a smart charger) will start pumping in as much current as the charger is capable of until the battery voltage gets up to the acceptance voltage, usually around 14.4 volts for flooded cell batteries, and holds this voltage for a period of time or until the current drops to a preset value, then drops the voltage to the float level around 13.5 volts.

If the chargers didn't do this stuff they couldn't justify putting computers inside the box and charging a lot of money. :nerd:

Smartplug users - pigtail adapter?

Now that I have switched to the SmartPlug, I ran across an interesting situation.

I moved my boat to a "guest slip" at the marina to do some buffing and polishing (easier to work on it there). Left my shorepower cord at the dock, and then wanted shore-power... but of course none of the offered loaner-cords would work because I now have the SmartPlug inlet.

Has anyone bothered to make (or buy?) a pigtail adapter, SmartPlug-female to standard 30a-male, so that you can use a standard shore-power cord in a pinch?

Or do you just make sure you have your SmartPlug cable on the boat everywhere you go?

I keep mine in the quarter birth.
I also keep the protective cap on it to keep it clean and dry.

Bruce,

I replaced my entire shore power cable with the orange Smart Plug cable because my existing cable looked so bad (faded and oxidized) and was old, probably original. At first, I was going to throw the old cable out, but I kept it, thinking I might add a new Smart Plug to the boat end and use it for cruising or a spare. It also lets me leave my orange cable at my dock, not a big deal for me, but some people have an involved and complicated setup for their shore power cables that is difficult to breakdown. I doubt there is any damage to the three conductors in the cable itself, so if the the dockside plug passes inspection, I'll wind up with a spare cable. Haven't done anything with it yet though. EDIT - I decided to dispose of the entire old cable. I should have cut it open to see conductor condition but it was obviously time to go old, faded, dirty, stiff probably original.

Mark

Mark,
I did the Smartplug thing recently as well. When I installed the new plug end on my old cord, I found the conductors were blacked. I cut the cord back 7' feet and found the same black like oxide along the length of all three conductors. It was as if the conductors were burnt. Even had a slight electrical-burnt smell to them. I have never seen this before and do not know the history of the cord at all. When the boat was passed down to me I was told the previous owner lived aboard. I opted to replace it. Might want to check the condition of your conductors before buying the replacement plug. Now I have to return it.

This got my attention at the time....

http://www.ericsonyachts.org/infoexchange/showthread.php?11930-Bzzzzzzzztt!!!&highlight=

evidence of the “black wire” type of corrosion I have seen on other un-tinned wire.

Wonder if that's what was going on with my cord.