BDofMSP
Guru
- Joined
- Sep 5, 2013
- Messages
- 905
- Location
- USA
- Vessel Name
- Gopher Broke
- Vessel Make
- Silverton 410 Sport Bridge
I'm not super experienced with marine electrical systems, so I'm posting this to try to learn more. We trailer our boat, so we do use shore power and our generator occasionally, but not as much as many here do. Regardless, the generator worked fine for the three years I've owned the boat until late last year, when it suddenly was only showing about 45-50 volts of output at the electrical panel meter. I assumed it was the voltage regulator, and I had my mechanic look at it during my spring commissioning.
He told me that after checking the generator output directly and finding nothing wrong, he traced it back to the electrical panel. He found that the PO had rewired both the shore power main breaker and the genset main breaker. Specifically, a post had broken off each of them (both 30 amp dual pole), so they simply wired everything to the remaining post.
I've borrowed a diagram from our friends at Bluesea to show what I'm talking about. The lower 30 amp is for the genset.
I've marked this file up to show how the post was broken off, and the wiring rerouted.
All of this has been replaced now, but I still would like to learn something. This setup worked while I owned it. I assume that the circuit switch worked because the hot was still connected properly and would be broken by the switch. So was the circuit protection missing? And would that be true just with the mains? Or would it apply to the individual circuits that come off the bus?
A second question would be why did the volt meter start showing 45-50 volts?
Thanks for your input.
BD
He told me that after checking the generator output directly and finding nothing wrong, he traced it back to the electrical panel. He found that the PO had rewired both the shore power main breaker and the genset main breaker. Specifically, a post had broken off each of them (both 30 amp dual pole), so they simply wired everything to the remaining post.
I've borrowed a diagram from our friends at Bluesea to show what I'm talking about. The lower 30 amp is for the genset.
I've marked this file up to show how the post was broken off, and the wiring rerouted.
All of this has been replaced now, but I still would like to learn something. This setup worked while I owned it. I assume that the circuit switch worked because the hot was still connected properly and would be broken by the switch. So was the circuit protection missing? And would that be true just with the mains? Or would it apply to the individual circuits that come off the bus?
A second question would be why did the volt meter start showing 45-50 volts?
Thanks for your input.
BD