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hi everyone jeff cote here with

votingtechtalk.com we've got a question

from a fellow voter carter asks jeff i

have one ac device alternating current

ac being a household appliance

aboard my boat a min coda

battery charger and there is no ac

wiring on the boat and the charger plugs

directly into an extension cord at the

dock

is there any need for a galvanic

isolator in this situation

great question

the short answer is

[Music]

no

uh

why well first of all the setup is

common

but unusual for boats that live in um

that are actually in the water

so we see that a lot on trailer boats

boats that

are not commonly connected to shore

power while in the water and these boats

generally have a simple and you're right

a simple sort of battery charger you

just plug into there's no ac system at

all on the boat and you literally just

plug in via shore power and it the

appliance on the boat is just an ac

outlet 15 amp now

that's common but what we've seen in the

marinas around here and certainly in the

projects that we work on is we recommend

converting those boats for especially

for the boats that are in the water to

have some sort of system where they have

a shore breaker right and when you

install shore breaker on a boat and this

is related to galvanic isolator so i'm

not losing keep following

when you install a short power system

not only you're installing basically

three wires that come from shore right

you're hot you're neutral in your ground

but you also have to do a ground tie and

that ground tie is connecting the ac

ground to the dc ground

now that's the reason why we need

galvanic isolators that ground tie is

essential it has to be there to meet the

code you have to do that

and the moment that you have your ac

system

ground connected to your dc system

ground which you have to here in north

america

the united states

and canada follows

what happens is you can actually now

have straight current corrosion so when

you have an ac system on your boat that

is properly installed and you have an ac

ground to dc ground connection

you absolutely need a galvanic isolator

now do you need a galvanic isolator if

you only plug in directly from

your battery charger to an ac outlet

that is connected somewhere else and

your boat is in the water no but should

you change that system if you're boating

into the water yeah you should probably

install a small little panel and we do

this all the time on 20-foot boats at

25-foot boats we see this all the time

and we'll install a very simple ac

system double pull breaker single pole

breaker for the charger we'll install

the galvanic isolator and we do this a

lot on grady whites

that come from the east coast and people

just have them on the trailer and when

they come here they stay in the water

and a lot of the marinas actually here

stipulate that you actually need to have

a shore power system and you cannot just

plug in your appliance

into a

an extension cord so a great question

from carter

so no you don't need a galvanic isolator

if you don't have an ac system on your

boat but if you have an ac system on

your boat and a simple one

even with just one appliance and it's

done right i recommend that you have a

galvanic isolator installed on your boat

it's definitely worth it

so thanks for asking the question if

you're curious we've written whole

articles about this go on our website

search it out

and we've got a lot of other tech talks

about this very topic if you haven't

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