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70 VAC at Charleston City Marina tonight
I was aboard the boat at Charleston City Marina drinking an ale because we
couldn't climb the mast to put up the THIRD Raymarine 2KW radome in the rain. Cap'n Geoffrey, Mike and I were sitting in the main cabin when a surge protector (simple MOV unit with no magnetic breaker) exploded with a flash through the plastic case as one of the MOVs met its match across the marina's hot to ground. The MOV simply exploded. A boom was heard earlier as downtown Charleston lost one or more of its main distribution transformers. After the MOV blew up, I noticed the battery charger had stopped reloading the house battery monsters, even though we had quite a few 12V loads running. Current was -8.2A on the main shunt. I got out the DVM and measured the AC line voltage being fed to the boat. It was only 70 VAC! I went up to the office to ask what was going on and the darkness they were all sitting in there was pretty self-evident. They had shut down the office AC power to protect the computers and other equipments. I asked them if they could shut down the marina's main AC power supply until SCE&Gouge could bring the brownout back up to some semblance of normal voltage. I pointed out that every piece of refridgeration on every uninhabited boat just sitting there would be in jeopardy, their compressors locked trying to start on half voltage. Well, Duhhh.... "We can shut down the marina from a special switch, but have been told (by "someone" I later found out) not to do it." It was 6PM and the head marina bureaucrats, I suppose, were long gone, leaving the kids to run things through the night. Hope those crappy marine A/C units with the cheap bottled compressors don't set fire to the boats. Properly notified of the hazard, and doing nothing to correct it even though they had the power and "switch" to do so, should leave marina management wide open to replace whatever burns out at 70 VAC....shouldn't it? Should we forget worrying over isolation transformers and galvanic isolators and just run the damned boats on some 5KW computer UPSs instead? Our boat is shutdown, tonight. The A/Cs are powerless and the brand new fridge is running off the monster house batteries until I get there, tomorrow. Sure glad we decided to stay aboard for a little ale in the rain....... |
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