Battery Charger Breaker trips on shore power

B

boatymcboatface

Active member
Joined
Apr 26, 2022
Messages
41
Fluid Motion Model
C-30 S
Hi,
I have a 2010 R29 and my battery charger trips within a few minutes of being on shore power. If I use the generator than it does not trip and works as it should. I had this issue 2 years ago and "it fixed itself". I am in same spot and power has not been upgraded. I am thinking its a connection or a short but have no idea where to start. Any advice would be appreciated.

thank you.

Boaty
 
When you say it trips, is this a circuit breaker or a shutdown of the charger? If a circuit breaker where is the CB located? On the R29 do you have a separate charger and inverter?
 
Its all in one charger and inverter. The breaker trips on the panel with 120 Volt breakers.
 
While not terribly common I have seen that behavior on other vessels caused by low voltage being supplied from the dock. Typically this happens when multiple vessels are all demanding sizable loads causing the voltage to drop sometimes as low as 109v which causes the amp draw of components to increase sometimes high enough to trip their breakers. Then when on generator with a solid 118-120v everything works perfectly. Same goes for if the other vessels leave the dock or stop demanding as much power (air con systems are off, heaters off, etc) the shore voltage goes back up and everything works.

This can also happen in Marinas with three phase where the phases are split between ramps/fingers and voltage losses occur on one dock caused by another having high demands.
 
Yes very similar, Blue Sea 2 columns of DC and one column of AC. The breaker on the panel says battery charger.
 
Just updating issue. The power coming into the boat is 120 measured by multimeter. But now the still trips on shore power within 1 minute and now on generator power after 5 minutes. Any suggestions maybe its the charger/invertor going bad.
 
Could it be a bad breaker?
 
I can here the battery charger/invertor start to get louder and the battery voltages go up very quickly until the breaker shots it down. I think the battery charger is over charging.
 
You need to measure the current on the when on shore power and when on generator power. A circuit breaker is a thermal magnetic device (which can have other features such as ELCI, GFCI, and AFCI) Magnetic is for large currents such as a fault and trips instantaneously, thermal is for overloads. Roughly a thermal molded case circuit breaker similar to what is used on a boat can handle 100% of the load almost indefinitely at 300% load 10-60 seconds at 600% 2-5 seconds. These are rough numbers and I did as I do not know the circuit breaker manufacturer.

The point is there are several possible issues, such as overload or bad circuit breaker (this would be a lower-level current exceeding the circuit breaker's rating). Or possibly an instantaneous trip in which a motor load comes online after you apply power. So I would eliminate a load-related condition first.

Load related
Defective circuit breaker
Bad battery resulting in the charger attempting to charge resulting in an overload (though I would think the charger would be protected against this.
Bad Charger.
 
Last edited:
Boat Electrician replaced invertor/charger breaker and seems ok for now. Next on the list replace autopilot pump.
 
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