electrical question

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andrew215

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I got into my 120V AC boat breaker panel recently and found that for some reason, the neutral was tied to the ground wire. The wires coming into the boat are separated (hot, neutral, ground) but for some reason the wireing in the panel is as above. Any ideas? I'm not that familiar with boat AC wiring and cannot fathom the reason for it, or if there are any repercussions I should be aware of. FYI, it's been working for alot of years this way, so am tending towards "if it ain't broke don't fix it".
thank you
 
Is the input to the panel wired to the input socket direct, or via a transformer ?

Were is the boat, 120V AC ?

Brian
 
In general only power generation equipment contain connections of the neutral to ground.

This connection is the essence of why Neutral and Hot are different.

Generation equipment can be back at the big PowerStation, or a onboard generator, or a isolation transformer.

Since you do not have isolation from the shore power this could be a serious problem. A lot of the worlds marinas have the Hot and neutral mixed up. If you connect to their power your hull will become Hot!

Shocking!



However, the connection might be on the back of your supply selector switch and only connected when using the onboard generator etc. Personally I would always put the Neutral tie in the generating unit itself.
 
My US boats have always had the neutral grounded only at the power source. This is in line with ABYC standards. It sounds like your system complies also - the neutral is grounded via the shore power line, not to the boat ground. There should be no other connection between neutral and ground. Some appliances may have this as standard in which case the connection should be removed.
Get Charlie Wings book - Boatowners Illustrated Handbook of Wiring - or Nigel Calders manual and all is explained.
 
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