Electric winches circuit breaker tripping

[garrymac]

Hi all.
I have a 2015 Jeanneau 44DS with Harken Electric Winches and occasionally the circuit breaker trips in local club races.
It is only occasionally, say once on every 4 or 5 races, but always at an inconvenient time.
To sort it you need to release the pressure off the winch and flip the circuit breaker back.  (Or put in a winch handle but the safety pin prevents this until the pressure is released).

Has anyone had this problem?  Or is it a fault. Does anyone know if the circuit breaker setting is adjustable?

[aussieodyssey]

garrymac

Generally circuit breakers are not adjustable . Sometimes they can trip because of a loose connection at the breaker causing a bit of heat . This would be a good place to start .

[so36idavid]

Are you sure that the problem's in the breaker and not the winch? How often do you service the winches?

[garrymac]

Hi Aussieodyssey
Thanks for the reply. My question really was to see if the circuit breakers were adjustable, and I am sure you are right and that they are not.  Also to ask if anyone else has electric primary winches and if this ever happens to others. The problem is that it only happens occasionally, and so hard to track.

Hi so36idavid
The winches and boat is only 6 months old. So never been served yet.

[so36idavid]

Jan 31, 2016 5:04:56 GMT garrymac said:

Hi so36idavid
The winches and boat is only 6 months old. So never been served yet.

Some racers service their winches multiple times a year, Harken recommends twice a year for soft-core racers. It might be worth opening one up and making sure that they're properly lubricated. If you've never done this before check out some videos on youtube or find someone experienced to show you. It shouldn't take more than a few minutes to take a peek in there. 

Something else to consider is the length and thickness of the wiring to the motors. If the wiring is inadequate then resistance in the wiring circuit would cause the whole system to work harder than it should. 

You said that the breaker was tripping while racing. Is this happening while you're maybe short tacking a lot? If you're running the winches long and hard then I can believe that the breakers are heating up and tripping. I would say a last resort would be to replace the breakers with a higher amperage rated unit (or "adjusting" as you queried). Because if you have a real problem in there then the breaker is doing its job. So the worst thing to do would be to let something else overheat instead of the breaker.

[abgreenbank]

When using fast speed (mostly) with high load do you ever get the winches cutting out for 10 seconds or so without tripping any circuit breaker?
they are supposed to do this, overload protection, if yours don't do this it could be the reason for tripping the cb's.
i have learnt to sense the overload protection and change to slow speed early to stop this happening.

oh, and harken have had issues with the black plastic insert on the top of the winch fading to grey, they (harken) changed all mine with no questions.

regards

ab

[Trevor]

Hi garrymac,

I figure if you are having this problem, perhaps the dealer may be able to assist you. Were the electric winches fitted at the factory or locally? If locally, I guess the installer could have picked a breaker value that was just one level too low for the winch size. Harken supply one of 5 different sizes for their winches so perhaps going up just one size would not be too risky. The breakers supplied are designed to handle multiples of the breaker current rating for a certain period of time. Those current versus time curves are available from the manufacturer and are quite specifically provided to allow for the instantaneous in-rush of the motor current when stopped and under load, just before it starts to rotate.

If you would prefer to do more detective work yourself, if you put a DC clamp meter (nowadays available very cheaply off eBay) on the cable leading to the winch, and then load the winch and operate it, you can see what the normal current is when the winch is operating. Perhaps you can set the meter for "maximum hold" and see what the peak current is during your racing. Now you can see how close that current is to the specification of the winch and importantly, the rating of the breaker.

If it is too close to the rating of the breaker, the breaker size may need to be increased. I would think that probably the normal maximum current draw should be no more than say, at a guess 50% of the breaker rating. The instantaneous current of a stalled motor just before it starts to move can be very high compared to the normal running current so that headroom is required in the rating of the breaker, particularly if that start current only takes place for a short period of time. The breakers are normally very tolerant of short duration overload of many times the rated current of the breaker.

I would ask the dealer, and perhaps suggest simply taking the breaker size up to the next one available from Harken. If a real problem exists, providing the cabling to the winch is adequate, the next size up will provide the protection you need. It just sounds like your racing load is exceeding the thermal boundaries of the current breaker.

I hope this helps,

Regards,

Trevor

[allthewaythere]

Something is not right.  The breaker should never trip unless it is over loaded ... and I am sure you have the correct sails since the boat is new.  Are the sheet leads fair?  If not, then if they catch (on the shrouds for instance) that could be a cause.  Otherwise call Harken ... their phone tech advice is excellent.  BTW, congratulations on you new vessel.