NO ELECTRIC

[Karen Louise]

Went away for a couple of days and returned to no shoreline power.....all still connected and nothing had tripped out.

Second time this has happened.....any simple explanations as to what's causing this. 🤔

[Mike Tee]

How did you fix it the first time? Are you in a marina?

[blackrose]

Do others in the marina or your mooring have power or is it just you that's lost it? Sorry but we need to start with the basics first.

 

If everyone else has power then you need to test your bollard. Plug something in directly to the bollard to check it's working. If it is then you know the problem is on the boat. Although having said that, a friend of mine once lost power and it turned out to be higher than normal voltage from the mains which his victron combi didn't like and so had cut out. My sterling gear was fine with it.

Edited January 17 by blackrose

[Jen-in-Wellies]

36 minutes ago, Karen Louise said:

any simple explanations as to what's causing this.

A simple explanation might not be the right explanation. Some times a complex answer is needed, especially with electricity. Fortunately, with electrical faults, the more total and complete the failure, the simpler the explanation tends to be. It is the subtle, intermittent faults that are hard to track down.

Run out of credit? dodgy electrical contact in one of the plugs/sockets? All the bollards are out? A damaged shore line wire with a break in the cable internally?

[Karen Louise]

Yes I'm in a Marina with shoreline electricity. Have plenty of credit, tried 2 different cables, no appliances were on.

What is confusing me is that all was fine when I left.....fiddled with the Victron charger/mains switch and eventually got power back.

Second time (yesterday) switch flicking got mains light on, then bulk followed by absorption but then kept cutting out before getting to float. I have no idea what any of these terms mean but know I have mains electric when Float is lit.

Persevered for an hour, lost the will to live, went out. Came back 6 hours later and all was fine !!! Really need to understand what the issue is and how to reduce likelihood of it happening again. 😟

[GUMPY]

If there are two black plugs in the middle at the bottom of the Victron unit make sure they are fully pushed in and there is no strain on the cables.

 

[Jen-in-Wellies]

7 minutes ago, Karen Louise said:

Yes I'm in a Marina with shoreline electricity. Have plenty of credit, tried 2 different cables, no appliances were on.

What is confusing me is that all was fine when I left.....fiddled with the Victron charger/mains switch and eventually got power back.

Second time (yesterday) switch flicking got mains light on, then bulk followed by absorption but then kept cutting out before getting to float. I have no idea what any of these terms mean but know I have mains electric when Float is lit.

Persevered for an hour, lost the will to live, went out. Came back 6 hours later and all was fine !!! Really need to understand what the issue is and how to reduce likelihood of it happening again. 😟

This is pointing to the Victron being the thing to look at. As @GUMPY said above, take a look at any black plugs. Some Victron combis use them, some don't. I've seen several fail, with the weight of the wire pulling them out enough to lose contact, especially with the vibration of cruising. A loose connection inside can also lead to overheating and melting. I've also seen the pins discolour and go high resistance. These have had to be replaced. There is mains on these, so disconnect the shore lead and turn off the Victron before poking around.

[Tony Brooks]

7 minutes ago, Karen Louise said:

Yes I'm in a Marina with shoreline electricity. Have plenty of credit, tried 2 different cables, no appliances were on.

What is confusing me is that all was fine when I left.....fiddled with the Victron charger/mains switch and eventually got power back.

Second time (yesterday) switch flicking got mains light on, then bulk followed by absorption but then kept cutting out before getting to float. I have no idea what any of these terms mean but know I have mains electric when Float is lit.

Persevered for an hour, lost the will to live, went out. Came back 6 hours later and all was fine !!! Really need to understand what the issue is and how to reduce likelihood of it happening again. 😟

 

If you did not touch the circuit breaker on the shoreside bollard, then the bollard tripping out can be discounted, so the problem has to be in the shore lead or the boat. My first action would be to take BOTH ends of the shore line out so you can open them up and check for loose terminal screws. Then plug it back in and see if the problem has gone away. If so work along the able bending it in small U shapes. If the power suddenly turns off, then you have a broken conductor in the cable. This is not a definitive test.

 

If you have the equipment and know how to do it safely it might be a good idea to measure the AC input voltage because if it drops too must the inverter may well trip out and if the low voltage is caused by a nearby factory etc. it might persist for a while.

[rusty69]

3 minutes ago, Jen-in-Wellies said:

This is pointing to the Victron being the thing to look at. As @GUMPY

Which also might explain the problems in the Ops other recent thread. 

[Karen Louise]

Thanks to everyone for this......at least I now know where to start looking. 👀

[LadyG]

As others have said, be careful of the AC (Alternating Current) power, it is approximately 240volts.

Your DC, (Direct Current) Is approximately 12volts, but in order to make use of this information you would need to use a multimeter and have a basic understanding of how to set it up ( Youtube will help).

As far as I am aware shore power carries 240v but only 16amps.

https://www.anker.com/blogs/others/basics-of-watts-to-amps

Boats usually have two battery banks, a starter, usually one battery, and a domestic bank, often more than one battery on a bigger boat link together and act together as the domestic bank.

 

Edited January 17 by LadyG
See my first sentence

[Arthur Marshall]

I know litle of these things, but could it just be variations in the power supply causing problems? In my home area we've had a lot of sudden power surges and dropouts recently, presumably because of the cold weather and people switching heating on and off. This finally resulted in a surge and a complete power cut.

Edited January 17 by Arthur Marshall

[jonathanA]

your starting point really should be to RTFM - read the flipping manual for your victron unit.  if you don't have the manual then posting the model number and/or a pic on here and someone will be able to tell you all about it.  the terms float, absorption and bulk relate to the charging (of the 12V batteries) function of your Victron.  I can't see why that should affect the boat mains unless there is something else going on. 

[Tony Brooks]

23 minutes ago, LadyG said:

snip

As far as I am aware shore power carries 240v but only 16amps.

https://www.anker.com/blogs/others/basics-of-watts-to-amps

 

This seems to minimise the danger from 240V AC. Not many milliamps in the right place will kill and so can 240V @ 16 amps. I think it is safer to not use "only 16 amps", because almost any current can be fatal.

[Slim]

3 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

 

This seems to minimise the danger from 240V AC. Not many milliamps in the right place will kill and so can 240V @ 16 amps. I think it is safer to not use "only 16 amps", because almost any current can be fatal.

Volts jolts.

Mils kills

[Tracy D'arth]

This is classic Victron agro.

 

Because they feed through the 240v all the time they get befuddled and the relay inside goes off.

Disconnect the shore line for an hour. Switch the Victron to charge only.

Put it back on and plug in.

 

If that does not solve it, it could be burnt soldered terminals on the mains connection blocks on the bottom of the boards, seen it often.

[Tony Brooks]

13 minutes ago, Slim said:

19 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

 

This seems to minimise the danger from 240V AC. Not many milliamps in the right place will kill and so can 240V @ 16 amps. I think it is safer to not use "only 16 amps", because almost any current can be fatal.

Volts jolts.

Mils kills

 

Tell me about it. When I trained REME apprentice mechanics, we used to get the electronics apprentices who had failed the electronics training so were sent to us being absolutely petrified of auto-electrical systems when they learned that at 12/24 volts we actually use and measure whole amps. It often took a fair time for them to grasp that at 12/24V the current that can penetrate most skin is not enough to hurt you. (Bit different if you happen to bridge a relay coil connections with your finger as it  de-energizes, that can give you a surprise, but no danger).

[booke23]

43 minutes ago, Tony Brooks said:

 

This seems to minimise the danger from 240V AC. Not many milliamps in the right place will kill and so can 240V @ 16 amps. I think it is safer to not use "only 16 amps", because almost any current can be fatal.

 

Indeed. Mercifully in this day and age there should be a RCD (surely one of the most underrated and brilliant inventions of the 20th century!) somewhere that will save your life in most circumstances but by no means all and not to be relied on. 

[jonathanA]

1 hour ago, Tony Brooks said:

 

Tell me about it. When I trained REME apprentice mechanics, we used to get the electronics apprentices who had failed the electronics training so were sent to us being absolutely petrified of auto-electrical systems when they learned that at 12/24 volts we actually use and measure whole amps. It often took a fair time for them to grasp that at 12/24V the current that can penetrate most skin is not enough to hurt you. (Bit different if you happen to bridge a relay coil connections with your finger as it  de-energizes, that can give you a surprise, but no danger).

when I was an apprentice anything more than 10W was considered 'power' by the electronics bods and the power guys used to talk about 'small machines of say 1/2 a megawatt'  one thing we always had to be careful about was our 'low voltage' 50V systems that could produce/handle very large currents and careless screwdriver or spanner could be 'entertaining'  

Edited January 17 by jonathanA
add off topic emoji :-)

[ditchcrawler]

54 minutes ago, booke23 said:

 

Indeed. Mercifully in this day and age there should be a RCD (surely one of the most underrated and brilliant inventions of the 20th century!) somewhere that will save your life in most circumstances but by no means all and not to be relied on. 

Many years ago when I worked for a living and was a safety rep I got sent to a 3 day safety course on a boat in St Caths Dock. There we had e lecture on electricity and the chap demonstrated how great they were by touching a live wire. When he asked for questions I enquired what he planned to do the day that piece of equipment went wrong. He didn't look amused. Most of the people on the course were ex fire chiefs going into the safety business  

[cuthound]

4 hours ago, Tony Brooks said:

 

This seems to minimise the danger from 240V AC. Not many milliamps in the right place will kill and so can 240V @ 16 amps. I think it is safer to not use "only 16 amps", because almost any current can be fatal.

 

Which is why domestic RCD's are set to 30mA (thirty thousandths of an amp for the benefit of those who don't understand the term  "milli"). Even 30MA directly across the heart can kill in the right circumstances.

 

 

 

4 hours ago, Tony Brooks said:

 

Tell me about it. When I trained REME apprentice mechanics, we used to get the electronics apprentices who had failed the electronics training so were sent to us being absolutely petrified of auto-electrical systems when they learned that at 12/24 volts we actually use and measure whole amps. It often took a fair time for them to grasp that at 12/24V the current that can penetrate most skin is not enough to hurt you. (Bit different if you happen to bridge a relay coil connections with your finger as it  de-energizes, that can give you a surprise, but no danger).

 

I initially studied electronics at college, so was familiar with currents in the milliamp range. When I joined BT's predecessor Post Office Telephones, they put me on the power section, where I was put to work maintaining DC power systems rated in thousands of amps. Scared the living daylights out of me at first. Then they merged the AC & DC sides and I had to learn to work on 11,000 volt high voltage AC systems, which initially scared me even more!

Edited January 17 by cuthound
To insert spaces between merged posts

[ditchcrawler]

2 hours ago, cuthound said:

 

I had to learn to work on 11,000 volt high voltage AC systems, which initially scared me even more!

So it should, thats how you stay alive 

[cuthound]

1 hour ago, ditchcrawler said:

So it should, thats how you stay alive 

 

Yes when I did my initial HV course at a BT training college the instructor wasted no time in saying not to worry, the switches were actually switching 50volts DC not 11,000 volts AC.

 

I told him he had ruined it for me as I wouldn't concentrate as hard on what I was doing.

[ditchcrawler]

7 minutes ago, cuthound said:

 

Yes when I did my initial HV course at a BT training college the instructor wasted no time in saying not to worry, the switches were actually switching 50volts DC not 11,000 volts AC.

 

I told him he had ruined it for me as I wouldn't concentrate as hard on what I was doing.

We did ours at Chesterfield with the local Electrical supply company with real switches

[cuthound]

5 minutes ago, ditchcrawler said:

We did ours at Chesterfield with the local Electrical supply company with real switches

 

We had real switches and switchboards too, it was just that they were switching 50 volts DC. The only fake thing was the standby generator, which was a cassette player playing a recording of a diesel.generator... 🤣

 

Once you had passed the initial course you were then trained on specific real installations and if successful given either an 'HV Approved Person' or 'HV Competent Person' ticket, which was valid on that specific installation for one year 

 

Later I became the 'Engineer HV' for a site and eventually 'Senior Engineer HV' for an area. These roles were mainly administrative, writing or approving method statements and switching schedules.