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hello everyone jeff cote here with
boatingtechtalk.com
thanks for joining us uh here and we've
got a question from a fellow boater
marcus marcus has a power boat a fleming
53
and uh marcus says uh jeff this is a new
to me boat
and a little bit of context so he was
marcus was connected to shore power
and he was making coffee and i forgot i
had a eater on in the
front stateroom same side of the boat
meaning there's probably
obviously same circuit i thought i blew
a fuse at the outlet
but when i looked at the panel it was
the inverter charger the magnum 2812
that had blown i switch it back and
everything was okay
why is the inverter on when i'm on shore
power
oh marcus do you have any idea how
excited i am to answer this question
today
god i love this so why
exactly it's like magic right why would
an inverter charger
blow a fuse when you're connected to
shore power
first rule and when in doubt always look
at rule number one on a boat
nothing is easy nothing is easy
always in doubt always go to back to
rule number one
all right so why is nothing easy well
first of all an inverter charger is
actually a pretty complicated and slick
device
it offers a lot of features and one of
those features
is this concept called pass through
so on our boats in the past and i've
seen this
with inverter chargers that were
installed 15 20 25 years ago
i've seen boats with actually source
selector switch
do you want to boat run the boat off
inverter do you want to run the boat
offshore or generator i've actually seen
those source selector switches with
inverter shore or generator and they
could be inverter shore one
short two and generator
now the advantage of pass-through is
that the inverter even when you have the
inverter enabled or disabled
there's this concept that when you're
connected to shore power the inverter
will
sense ac coming in and will actually
send ac out so and by the way it's not
just
letting through whatever um it actually
will actually
make give you alarms it's actually going
to say oh you know what this is good ac
good frequency good voltage or you might
even alarm if it's bad
but in any effect it's going to take ac
and let it through
and that's called pass-through so ac
input ac output
the breaker on the panel on your fleming
and again i'm
going from conjecture here because we've
seen a few boats
and thank you everyone for inviting me
on your boats because it was my dream
when i was a kid of actually doing what
i'm doing right now
that inverter charger breaker is
actually the ac
input to your inverter and that ac input
does more
than just the inverter it also will
power the ac
loads that can be powered either
through shore power or whatever
energizes your panel and your panel is
probably energized by multiple sources
right now
probably you know shore on one end
generator on the end
source selector goes to the panel and
then you have what's a section on the
panel that's called
the non-inverted side so those are loads
that can only ever ever be run
from shore or generator there's a
breaker on your panel
the inverter charger breaker that you're
talking about that inverter charger
breaker
is fed from the output of either chore
or generator
you turn it on then you send power to
the inverter
if the inverter is in your case the
inverter gets the ac
sends the ac out and and energizes a
bunch of outlets
the things that most of us are going to
want to have powered from the inverter
which are the ac outlets
so it could be your microwave it could
be the ac outlets in your galley it
could be the ac
outlets on your head it could be the ac
outlets in your entertainment center
now when you're connected to shore power
what happens is the following
is if you're drawing more than 30 amps
on
all of those outlets the 30 amp
shore power feed that is powered by that
circuit breaker
if it exceeds 30 amp which is making
coffee and a heater
that breaker will trip even though you
weren't using the inverter
and even though the inverter wasn't on
and that's normal because what happens
is the inverter charger because of
pass-through
offers automatic switching meaning
even if you had your inverter on on your
boat and you were connected shore power
the inverter wouldn't turn itself on it
would say i know you want me to invert
but why would i invert when i have an ac
input that is energized
and has good ac what you mean to say and
this is a conditional
sort of state is yes i know you've asked
me to turn myself on
as an inverter but actually if i sense
ac input i'm not going to do that
regardless of you asking what i'm going
to do is i'm going to go in a mode
called standby
meaning i'm waiting to lose ac and the
moment you i lose ac
i'm going to catch it so quickly that
your tv won't even flicker
and that is something that inverters do
nowadays so it allows you to transfer
from
shore generator and to not have the tv
even flicker
and that's called pass-through and
standby and that's why
marcus your inverter charger breaker
tripped
because you were overloading the circuit
which by the way it's not a big deal
happens to a lot of us
and it happened on your inverter charger
but your inverter charger does more than
just
inverted loads it does pass through
loads and that automatic switching
is what causes the problem that you saw
and there's really i mean sure there's
workarounds but
it's just now that you know that that's
like that there's nothing wrong with
your system and i've done
thousands of boats just like the boat
you have right now and it's
your boat is exactly the way my boat is
wired as well nothing wrong with it
it's just the way it is so thanks for
asking i'm really happy that i got a
chance to explain that
for all of you that are watching if
you've got further questions post them
down below
i've got further questions on inverter
chargers guess what i've
we've we have presentations hour-long
presentations
just on inverter chargers and i don't
just mean one i mean
multiple there's probably over 10
20 i don't know 30 hours of content just
on inverter chargers
because yes i think they're pretty cool
devices and we also have articles
voting tech talk ask pys all that is on
our website
all free all available to help you the
voter get more out of your boat
so thanks for watching and joining us
today
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