Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Electrical Panel

We often joke about when you own a boat, you become a city manager on account of all of the systems on board necessary to support a style of living similar to that on shore. Old-timers will scoff at the complexity of a modern boat saying it is an invitation to disaster (or at least a smaller bank account). Nevertheless, that is the way new boats are built because boat buyers expect creature comforts comparable to their home.

To illustrate this, below are photos of our electrical panel.

Our boat can handle shore power of either 110VAC or 220VAC. Internally, we use 220VAC so shore power of 110 VAC is “stepped” up to the higher voltage through adjusting the connections of our isolation transformer.
Since this photo was taken, we have added a warning telling us to NEVER, EVER step up 220 VAC to a higher voltage.  Bad things happen.
 
As mentioned above, internally we start with 220VAC which is used for selected items which would only operate with shore power or the generator. Most AC devices operate with 110V which we obtain by stepping 220V down.  
The gritty backside of the AC panel.
We own a 24VDC boat but we do have some 12V items.  The 12VDC is obtained by a DC-DC converter from 24V.
The backside of the DC panel

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