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Post by westboating on Oct 15, 2019 2:32:26 GMT
Folks,
I have a new, 2018, NC 895 and my marina has recently switched to compliant with the new current leakage standards. I can't run my water heater of microwave without taking down the whole dock. These new marina systems are wired to trip not only for the traditional excess current from the panel, but also compare current output to current returned to the panel. Some of these more expensive systems are individual to the power at each slip, while others, like ours, is the whole dock. When there is excess current loss to the water and not grounded back to the shore power, the system trips. Has anyone else had any experience with this challenge and found a resolution? Some suggestions are to install a Equipment Leakage Circuit Interrupter (ELCI) for your boat, so leaking current will trip at your boat first. I think the problem when you have a single trip point, the aggregate of each slip's current leakage will trip the central ELCI at the panel.
Thank you, West
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Post by Trevor on Oct 15, 2019 20:23:32 GMT
Hello West,
Certainly in Australia, it would be customary and maybe required that each outlet to each boat has an earth leakage breaker. To only have one earth leakage breaker for the entire dock would cause an unacceptable level of interruptions to power for the entire dock. These breakers are relatively inexpensive so to only have one for the entire dock seems unacceptable.
Earth leakage breakers do at least draw the owners attention to equipment that does have a current path to earth. It sounds like you have such a situation on your boat. Tripping power to the entire dock makes the fault harder to find because you must walk some distance to reset the breaker rather than simply reset it at your outlet near your boat.
Certainly is Australia it is common to have earth leakage issues but not common to only have one breaker for the entire dock.
Regards,
Trevor
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Post by westboating on Nov 18, 2019 1:21:14 GMT
Trevor,
1. Beautiful boat in your profile picture.
2. I brought the boat back from some servicing on Friday and had a little time to trouble shoot the leakage. The service folks checked the boat and the found that with their power cord, they saw nothing more than .2mA of leakage. I connected shore power at my dock and turned the battery charger on. Then I turned the water heater on and the ELCI at the main breaker panel tripped. The marina management doesn't lock the panel anymore (due to frequent trips) so I was able to play a bit.
The ELCI has a leakage read out, and it is cumulative for the entire dock. It is set to trip at 100 mA. With just my battery charger on and the rest of the slips powered the readout was around 45-55 mA. It was a slow day on the dock, and we're out of boating season here, so I turned off all of the breakers one by one. When my slip was the only one powered, it showed about 28-35 mA of leakage. I then tried the water heater and, walked back to see the reading up to around 75 mA. I put a cup of water in the microwave and tried to set it for 2 min, but it immediately tripped the ELCI breaker. I could run the battery charger and one other item, the water heater or the microwave. I did not have any higher power items (hair dryer.. etc) to see if our 2 ac outlets would also add to the leakage measured at the panel. I also tried adjacent shore power outlets with similar behavior.
My next step I think will be to see if I can connect a load to the outlet that is not on the boat and see if the leakage is on my boat or the marina's installation.
Wish me luck
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