Loss of AC dock power...

We are on the road 500 miles away from the boat when we get an e-mail from out yacht club that they had to shut off AC power due to low voltage. That was on Thursday. We will not get to the boat until Monday. We have six 6 volt golf cart batteries and two series 24 12 volt batteries with the only load bein' the fridge. Think they will hold up till Monday?

loads?

You should be OK for 3-4 days without charging. CO detectors are usually the biggest parasitic load at 1-2 amps. Your 660 amp hours of house batteries should be able to handle that. But if the fridge is on, maybe not. But it should cut off at about 11.5 v.

David

If you are located in or north of puget sound I doubt the fridge is going to cycle very often

VBG

Fortunate the fridge was not running on AC shorepower. It`s not, is it?

Without knowing what load the fridge is drawing...hardly worth a guess.

Plus if the fridge is in a poorly ventilated space...it is keeping itself warmer than the rest of the boat... Granted we would hope the fridge is better insulated than the compartment so its a small difference..but still...my fridge cycles quite often and need help on several levels.

So without a amperage draw number...even a decent guess...hard to say.

Would the fridge have a low voltage cutoff? Mine doesn't as the PO had a non-marine compressor put in a few years back, but don't some have one?

The usual boat fridge comes from the RV folks where power is no problem.

Figure 100AH per day , less since there will be no door openings , and its cool..

A Sun Frost is about 1/2 the RV stuff in amps .

At least its not cold enough to worry about a DC furnace failing and the boat freezing the pipes and sinking.

Have you considered asking the yacht club to enter your boat and turn the refrigerator off and dump the contents?


Some marine refrigerators will turn themselves off if the power gets too low to protect the batteries.


Also, you're lucky they told you. If they didn't and your frozen chicken, etc. thawed and then refroze when the power came back on and you consumed it, you might have a serious problem.

djmarchand said:

............. CO detectors are usually the biggest parasitic load at 1-2 amps. .............

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Fortunately, the newer generation of CO detectors draw a lot less power. If you have one of the older ones it might be worth replacing it. They usually have a life of only a few years anyway, then they must be replaced or recertified.

No CO detector, just the reefer on dc pullin' 6 amps when runnin'. The batts are all wet cells, new this year. The temps have been 70 for highs and 42 for lows.

FF said:

A Sun Frost is about 1/2 the RV stuff.

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Maybe but they cost over $2000.

R10 Energy Efficient Refrigerator

Nope Ancora, your fridge will not make it and your batteries will be toast. Turn it off now. Murphy 101.

When we travel south for months at time, we have our other live aboards, my yatch service and marina check on the boat. We have a boat alarms, Boatnanny, that sends a text message to my phone, bilge, AC and DC electric, temperature salon and bilge, motion and sound. So if an alarm goes off I know it with in minutes and call for someone to check on the boat. So call someone if concerned. Better to be safe rather than sorry.

If in doubt, I'd get someone to empty and turn the fridge off. The amount of food you'll use is cheap.

Reefer contents of no value, just don't want to lose the wet batts. Any way we'll find out tomorrow mornin' as we are back from our 1,000 mile road trip.

I would be asking the RC what the heck is going on with dock power! Something horribly wrong there


Keith

refugio said:

I would be asking the RC what the heck is going on with dock power! Something horribly wrong there


Keith

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"Horribly wrong" would seem an exaggeration to me. Loss of dock power, water, etc. in a marina is not unusual and should be planned for.

They even notified him which is pretty good.

You should be fine. With the fridge needing 6 amps when running, in those weather conditions, I doubt that you are running at more than a 30% duty cycle. That is about 50 amp hours in 24 hrs. With a 660 amp hour house bank, you could go almost a week and still stay above 50% discharged.


David

Got any frozen squid in that fridge?? Don't ask why I pose that question!!!

Ski in NC said:

Got any frozen squid in that fridge?? Don't ask why I pose that question!!!

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Been there. Thru the fridge out.

Capt.Bill11 said:

Been there. Thru the fridge out.

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Yeah, once someone unplugged the bait fridge at a friends house over in the Bahamas. Next trip we came back it was full of roaches and other insects. Luckily it was in the garage separate from the house. Sealed up with gorilla tape and off to the dump it went!

I still think the marina owed you more explanation. Why low voltage? How long? What are they doing to remedy things. I also think you should have been able to ask them to take steps to protect your boat.

"Maybe but they cost over $2000. "

With any alternate energy lifestyle , the load reduction almost always pays for the unit.

The Diesel is not efficient , alts are not efficient , battery charging has costs in energy and service life so a smart fridge can be a deal, even at 2 boat bucks.

A slip cottage , aground in its coffee grounds , might not find it useful, but folks that cruise just might.

WesK said:

"Horribly wrong" would seem an exaggeration to me. Loss of dock power, water, etc. in a marina is not unusual and should be planned for.

They even notified him which is pretty good.

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I meant horribly wrong with managing the power. I was assuming there are meters on the slips - simply turn off the over consumers. Use an IR meter or camera to find the offenders. Powering down the entire dock is lazy and poor management. It solves nothing and puts vessels at risk. The RC blew it.


Keith

Have seen it where private yacht clubs suffer power disruptions that nearby non yacht club marinas do not. Professional management vs membership elected ("Who wants to head the dock management committee this year, pour me another drink!").

This riposte aside, when away, why leave your fridge plugged in and potentially draining the batteries vs solely running off 110?

refugio said:

I meant horribly wrong with managing the power. I was assuming there are meters on the slips - simply turn off the over consumers. Use an IR meter or camera to find the offenders. Powering down the entire dock is lazy and poor management. It solves nothing and puts vessels at risk. The RC blew it.


Keith

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It's unfair to blame the marina without knowing exactly what is going on. It could be an external situation.

One should never consider electrical power to be 100% reliable over the long term. In most cases it is very reliable but you have storms, damage to underground cables, etc. and of course, problems unique to marinas.

This has been an interesting thread.


I think that everyone who docks a boat at a marina should be prepared for an extended power outage. The power could be cut for maintenance work or some jerk could have kicked your power cord loose.


So don't leave perishable stuff in your fridge if you leave it on. And if you leave it on, many fridges can operate on AC or DC power. So trip your DC breaker so it won't drain your batteries down if the AC fails.


The other thing to do is to look for high amperage parasitic loads and reduce or eliminate them. I was glad to hear that modern CO detectors don't draw the 1 amp or so that older ones draw. It would be worth replacing an older one for that benefit.


David

A friend had his boat in the slip and went away for a few hours. When he came back there was a boat in the slip beside him (transient) and the guy said "I unplugged your cord so I could plug mine in. I hope you don't mind."


Well, my friend did mind and told the guy so in no uncertain terms. He unplugged the new guy's boat and plugged his back in. He told the new guy to find another pedestal or move to another slip.


You never know what might happen.

Power can fail for extended periods as this situation illustrates, so I think the key is to be prepared. Protecting your batteries is probably most important, which means ensuring you have low voltage disconnects on devices. Losing the contents of a fridge, and even the fridge itself is probably cheaper than losing a battery bank.

Inverters I think all have LV disconnect, so the issue becomes the DC loads, starting with the largest. A DC fridge or freezer would be tops on the list. Even if turning it off doesn't cut all your DC loads, it will extend how long you can go before you start to really trash your batteries. If you have other significant DC loads, an LVD might make sense on them too.

While I agree with being prepared which to me includes having someone there on site to assist, I'm also not letting the marina off as easy as some of you are. I've read in this thread somewhat casual statements regarding extended power failure. If it's power outage caused by a storm and the entire area without power, I can accept that. However, if it's not that then the other reasons are unacceptable meaning any power outage just at the marina. Here we've got a marina saying they shut the power off due to low voltage. What? What are they talking about? They have a responsibility to get it repaired, functioning quickly. This isn't a qualified "act of God" or any other disaster. It sounds like a marina with an inadequate power system or some other issue. I'd also expect them to check my boat for me daily and let me know how it's doing until they have their problem fixed.

To the OP, did you get any further explanation as to what is going on and why?