Electrical power connections advice, converter or transformer advice

Hi,

From your list I would say that you will be ok with a transformer as they all appear to be in the 50 Hz part of the world. I am just not 100% certain what the power is in the Middle East where you plan to cruise. If you fit a converter or shore power unit you will be able to plug into a wide range of voltages regardless of the frequency and thereby save yourself a lot of hassles in strange ports further a field.

As to the exact services available I suggest you contact the marinas where you want to go and ask them what is available, I could not say for sure who has what available as it is quite a while since I have been in many of these places and even thought about plugging in. I do recall that if it's plugged in then 63A seems to be the limit of the off the shelf plugs. Over this you would normally need to connect to the marinas terminals in the shore power box.

You should also be aware that whilst the Power may well be 400V 3Ph 50HZ at the dock office end of things it and often is a lot less at the very far end of the dock if there are lots of others plugged in as well. It is a bit like the water pressure the further from the source and the more users the less pressure you get.

Shore Power

It appears from your description that the boat is rigged to accept a standard 3 phase 380/220 50 HZ. It is likely that the boat is also fitted with a distribution transformer. If so the neutral is not connected in the input. The three hots go into the transformer and three hots and a neutral come out. They selected that inlet configuration because it is a very common marina presentation in European. If the budget and the size of the boat will allow it a shore power converter made by ASEA or Atlas would solve all your issues. You plug the boat into anything and it deals with the conflict. The output of the shore power converter is constant regardless of the shore voltage, shore frequency, shore power quality. The other possiblity is to build a custom power transfer switch that would control the input taps of your existing transformer. This would allow for small voltage corrections in the output of the transformer. The parts necessary - Atlas or ASEA = $ 50k USD, Isolation transformer with tap switch 3K USD. It is much easier to have a 60 HZ boat go to a 50 HZ system than the alternative. Most of the marine manufactures build there equipment to be 50/60 tolerant.

Hi,

Northern Lights are you saying that in European Marinas they don't use the neutral when you plug into 3 phase shore power?

clearity

No I am not saying that at all. The distribution transformer that I speak of in my post is on the boat. The marina supplies the neutral. Its just not used on the boats input to its transformer. Not all boats are equipped with transformers. The neutral that the transformer equipped boat sees (references) is created on the load side of the transformer. The reason the marina supplies the four pin + G is that not all boats have an isolation or distribution transformers. I hope that expanding on this point has not further confused the readers. If so I will explain it again. Thanks K1W1 for calling me on this point.

Spread the Knowledge

Hi,

I was a bit confused when I read your post, thanks for taking the time to expand on it.