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Old 08-19-2019, 07:57 PM   #10
STB
Guru
 
City: Gulf coast
Join Date: Aug 2016
Posts: 2,271
Quote:
Originally Posted by tiltrider1 View Post
You should not use a portable generator on a boat unless you know for certain that the neutral and ground are bonded at the generator.

Many portable generators have isolated neutral and grounds. Yes, everything seems to be working fine until one day some one swims up to your boat and dies from Elextro-shock drowning.
I'm not seeing how a voltage differential can exist across the water with neither the generator's hot nor neutral interacting with the water.

With a single fault, we might connect the generator's neutral to the water. Or, we might get a hot wire in the water. But, we don't have a complete circuit.

But, I think we'd need two faults to get the hot in the water in one place, and the neutral in the water in another place, and the resulting voltage differential in between. This, for example, would require neutral and ground bonded on the boat and to metal thru-hulls and a hot wire in the water, or maybe an outlet getting swamped or a wet swimmer or something ending up with a human connected to both the hot and the neutral.

I'm not arguing that the safety ground shouldn't be bonded to neutral when on generator power. I'm just not sure on this particular scenario.
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