View Single Post
  #21   Report Post  
posted to rec.boats.cruising
Larry Larry is offline
external usenet poster
 
First recorded activity by BoatBanter: Jul 2006
Posts: 5,275
Default dock box A/C mystery

Auspicious wrote in news:a6ff2273-b540-4f0d-b82e-
:

I have wintered at a couple of marinas with home runs from each power
pylon to the distribution panels. The cabling under the docks was
truly impressive. In other places the winter liveaboards and frequent
winter boaters were redistributed in the slips to keep loads on
different distribution circuits. Even so we quickly figured out which
boats we could turn off power to on really cold nights. It's polite to
turn them back on in the morning however.



Ashley Marina in Charleston is impressively wired like this. There are
primary distribution transformers mounted right on the floating docks.
They are huge, much larger than ground transformers feeding many houses.
The hum, in Summer with all the air conditioners flogging away trying to
cool the uninsulated plastic boxes, is very impressive. The docks are fed
with 23,000 volt primaries, which keeps the cabling down to a minimum.

At City Marina, when one of the large powerboats docks to the Megadock, the
duty engineer for the marina tows a little trailer-mounted substation out
on the dock to provide individual isolated power to large vessels. He
plugs it into the high voltage feedpoints along the dock. I think they can
provide 3 phase and single phase 208, 240, 440 and maybe 908VAC service to
some very impressive looking "dock cables".

These power transformers have a CONVENIENT watt hour meter built into the
end of them, of course, for the billing. I'm not sure if they have
remotely readable metering, but that wouldn't surprise me.