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.......

And how would you like to be responsible for "telling" them to shut
down the main switch. After doing so there will be a gigantic kick
back of voltage to all the boats tied together on the open ac mains.
The kick back will come from the fields suddenly collapsing in all
those compressors and battery chargers that are on line. Now it is
your fault that someone's equipment got fried! :)

Regards
Gary


On Tue, 15 Feb 2005 02:45:47 GMT, Larry W4CSC wrote:

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.......

Gary Schafer wrote in
:

And how would you like to be responsible for "telling" them to shut
down the main switch. After doing so there will be a gigantic kick
back of voltage to all the boats tied together on the open ac mains.
The kick back will come from the fields suddenly collapsing in all
those compressors and battery chargers that are on line. Now it is
your fault that someone's equipment got fried! :)

Regards
Gary


Naw....We had all that before the 70V happened. I took the exploded little
surge protector to the marina office and they were very interested in
talking about over and undervoltage sensing equipment. Grangers sells them
for $75. They activate external trip breakers to shut down the marina.
Management was very interested.

Gary, you talk about all this as if the power were some kind of DC circuit.
Any time the power company just shuts the power down, according to your
crazy theories, everything in the grid would be destroyed. We had a huge
overvoltage condition that exploded that surge protector, followed by a
long period of intense brownout. Is brownout better for everyone's
refridgeration than simply shutting the marina down until the power company
can restore the proper voltage?....

I think not.

On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 15:00:43 GMT, Larry W4CSC wrote:

Gary Schafer wrote in
:

And how would you like to be responsible for "telling" them to shut
down the main switch. After doing so there will be a gigantic kick
back of voltage to all the boats tied together on the open ac mains.
The kick back will come from the fields suddenly collapsing in all
those compressors and battery chargers that are on line. Now it is
your fault that someone's equipment got fried! :)

Regards
Gary


Naw....We had all that before the 70V happened. I took the exploded little
surge protector to the marina office and they were very interested in
talking about over and undervoltage sensing equipment. Grangers sells them
for $75. They activate external trip breakers to shut down the marina.
Management was very interested.

Gary, you talk about all this as if the power were some kind of DC circuit.
Any time the power company just shuts the power down, according to your
crazy theories, everything in the grid would be destroyed. We had a huge
overvoltage condition that exploded that surge protector, followed by a
long period of intense brownout. Is brownout better for everyone's
refridgeration than simply shutting the marina down until the power company
can restore the proper voltage?....

I think not.


I suppose you don't know why you should always shut down your air
conditioners on the boat before you disconnect the mains power.

Regards
Gary

Gary Schafer wrote:
On Wed, 16 Feb 2005 15:00:43 GMT, Larry W4CSC wrote:


Gary Schafer wrote in
m:


And how would you like to be responsible for "telling" them to shut
down the main switch. After doing so there will be a gigantic kick
back of voltage to all the boats tied together on the open ac mains.
The kick back will come from the fields suddenly collapsing in all
those compressors and battery chargers that are on line. Now it is
your fault that someone's equipment got fried! :)

Regards
Gary


Naw....We had all that before the 70V happened. I took the exploded little
surge protector to the marina office and they were very interested in
talking about over and undervoltage sensing equipment. Grangers sells them
for $75. They activate external trip breakers to shut down the marina.
Management was very interested.

Gary, you talk about all this as if the power were some kind of DC circuit.
Any time the power company just shuts the power down, according to your
crazy theories, everything in the grid would be destroyed. We had a huge
overvoltage condition that exploded that surge protector, followed by a
long period of intense brownout. Is brownout better for everyone's
refridgeration than simply shutting the marina down until the power company
can restore the proper voltage?....

I think not.



I suppose you don't know why you should always shut down your air
conditioners on the boat before you disconnect the mains power.

Regards
Gary

No, Gary, we don't. Do you?

There is no difference between shutting off your A/C either at it's
control panel, breaker box, or by shooting up the distribution
transformer down the street. Non. Except for the legalities, of course.

Operating an electric motor on low voltage is more likely to cause
damage by melting from excessive start circuit current.

The reason the power company wants you to turn stuff off in the
event of brown or down power is to reduce the start-up surge they
have to deal with when a million TV's, freezers, and other devices
are all powered up at the same time. The same sort of thing occurs
if you leave your A/C and other stuff turned on and then plug in
shore power. The damage occurs at the connector when small,
incompletely engaged, dirty sliding surface areas get to conduct
heavy starting currents, overheating and possibly damaging your
shore power connector.

Your fear may come from hearing about collapsing fields in DC motor
windings, and it is a real concern when opening and closing
under-rated switches, but not nearly as worrisome as when hydro
tries to kick start millions of home and industrial appliances
simultaneously.

Because customers don't co-operate well, Hydro's systems are
necessarily able to handle large overloads for short periods, all
within reason, of course.

We all need to think about reducing electrical consumption, world
wide. Charity begins at home.

Terry k

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 11:02:05 -0400, Terry Spragg
wrote:

No, Gary, we don't. Do you?

There is no difference between shutting off your A/C either at it's
control panel, breaker box, or by shooting up the distribution
transformer down the street. Non. Except for the legalities, of course.


By not turning off your air conditioner systems before disconnecting
your shore power cable or by only shutting down your main breaker this
is what happens:

The fields in the air conditioner motors suddenly collapse when power
is removed. The collapsing fields will generate a high voltage spike
throughout your boats mains system. Any other equipment that is turned
on at that time will receive those high spikes of voltage. Everything
that is turned on is connected to the air conditioner motors. You can
guess what can happen with voltage spikes fed to some types of
equipment.

If you shut down the AC systems first you avoid any kick back voltage
spikes being fed to other equipment. The fields just collapse and no
voltage spikes go anywhere.

And yes an ac motor is no different than a DC motor when it comes to
generating emf. A collapsing field is a collapsing field. If it was
originally powered by dc or ac you still get the same effect. Both
have voltage disconnected and the field collapses in the same manor.
Other than if you happen to switch the ac motor off at zero crossing.
Any transformer connected to the line will also do the same. Those old
battery chargers with the large transformer in them can also cause the
same problems. Although motors are the worst culprits as they usually
operate at higher currents and generate more kick back.

When the power company shuts down large areas it does not cause as
many problems because there are usually many loads still on line that
tend to absorb most of the kick backs from motors on line. But still
there can be some damage done by this.

Regards
Gary

Gary Schafer wrote in
:

The fields in the air conditioner motors suddenly collapse when power
is removed. The collapsing fields will generate a high voltage spike
throughout your boats mains system. Any other equipment that is turned
on at that time will receive those high spikes of voltage. Everything
that is turned on is connected to the air conditioner motors. You can
guess what can happen with voltage spikes fed to some types of
equipment.

If you shut down the AC systems first you avoid any kick back voltage
spikes being fed to other equipment. The fields just collapse and no
voltage spikes go anywhere.


Wow! All this time I thought Tesla's multiphase AC power system had
collapsing fields 120 times per second, not when I unplugged the shore
power cable!....

Which one of the boater electrical expert books at Waste Marine did you get
all this bull**** from, anyways, Gary?

AC systems don't work like DC systems.....(c;

On Thu, 17 Feb 2005 20:37:46 GMT, Larry W4CSC wrote:

Gary Schafer wrote in
:

The fields in the air conditioner motors suddenly collapse when power
is removed. The collapsing fields will generate a high voltage spike
throughout your boats mains system. Any other equipment that is turned
on at that time will receive those high spikes of voltage. Everything
that is turned on is connected to the air conditioner motors. You can
guess what can happen with voltage spikes fed to some types of
equipment.

If you shut down the AC systems first you avoid any kick back voltage
spikes being fed to other equipment. The fields just collapse and no
voltage spikes go anywhere.


Wow! All this time I thought Tesla's multiphase AC power system had
collapsing fields 120 times per second, not when I unplugged the shore
power cable!....

Which one of the boater electrical expert books at Waste Marine did you get
all this bull**** from, anyways, Gary?

AC systems don't work like DC systems.....(c;


I know you slept through the basic AC theory class but the DC one too!
:)
As I am sure you missed the lab part too,
You can try for yourself. Take a little 12 volt ac motor or
transformer and connect its 12 volt winding to a 12 volt ac power
source. Hold on to each lead of the motor or transformer bare wires if
you dare. Touch them and remove them from the 12 volt ac source. I bet
you let go rather quickly. :)

Better yet hook your oscilloscope to the winding instead of your
fingers. Look closely as you disconnect the winding from the power
source. Turn the gain down on the scope so you can see the high
voltage spike before it goes off the screen.

You keep disconnecting the shore cable without turning things off
first and you wonder why your mov's are popping! Those things do wear
out you know, or do you?

Regards
Gary

"Gary Schafer" wrote in message
...

By not turning off your air conditioner systems before disconnecting
your shore power cable or by only shutting down your main breaker this
is what happens:

The fields in the air conditioner motors suddenly collapse when power
is removed. The collapsing fields will generate a high voltage spike
throughout your boats mains system. Any other equipment that is turned
on at that time will receive those high spikes of voltage. Everything
that is turned on is connected to the air conditioner motors. You can
guess what can happen with voltage spikes fed to some types of
equipment.

A few arguments against this: if you use the switch on the A/C unit itself,
you disconnect the motor coil completely. It is virtually unloaded and will
therefore produce a high inductanc voltage.

However, if other equipment is connected while unplugging the shore power,
much of the spike will be dampened by this other equipment. Furthermore,
equipment that is commercially sold, is required by regulations to be able
to withstand spikes up to a certain level, just to prevent this kind of
potential damage caused by other connected (or suddenly disconnected)
equipment.


If you shut down the AC systems first you avoid any kick back voltage
spikes being fed to other equipment. The fields just collapse and no
voltage spikes go anywhere.

Well, the voltage spike will at least produce an arc across the switch,
which in turn delivers the spike onto your power system.

Meindert

"Larry W4CSC" wrote in message
...
Gary Schafer wrote in
:

Wow! All this time I thought Tesla's multiphase AC power system had
collapsing fields 120 times per second, not when I unplugged the shore
power cable!....

There's a huge difference timing here. The AC power system goes from maximum
voltage to 0 over a period of 8.3msec, which is slow compared to breaking
the circuit instantaneously.

Meindert