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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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