So far, SmartPlug only offers the30-ampere boat-side receptacle, the
matching 30 A boat-side plug for your shore power cable, and the made-up
30 A shore power cable, with the 30 A boat-side SmartPlug on one end and
a conventional 30 A shore-side connector on the other end. I really
like the new made-up shore power cable, as I found it painfully
difficult to install the SmartPlug boat-side plug in place of the
boat-side plug on a new Marinco shore power cord.
The SmartPlug boat-side shore power receptacle has a thermostat the
opens the hot lead if the connector overheats, thereby delaying the fire
somewhat, until the thermostat fails from repeated arcing as it
overheats, opens, cools down, closes again - again and again.
Unfortunately, the built-in thermostat only opens the hot (black) wire,
and not both hot and neutral -- so you STILL need (as required by ABYC
E-11) a reverse polarity detector and alarm on your boat, to guard
against mis-wired marina shore-side outlets.
And, especially if you keep your boat in fresh water, an isolation
transformer would be a Very Good Thing. Or at least the newly-required
ELCI (Equipment Leakage Circuit Interrupter). You don't want to be
responsible for electrocuting some kid who is swimming in the marina.
(_Never _swim in a marina, especially a fresh-water marina!)
James Maynard
S/V Mistress of Portland, Oregon
Baba 30 #4
On 2011-03-01 03:09 PM, Ben Okopnik wrote:
On Tue, Mar 01, 2011 at 06:00:49PM -0500, Jim Lynch wrote:
I saw a blurb on the SmartPlugs on a podcast the other day. It looks
like a real improvement over Edison's design. :)
It might be worthwhile looking into:
http://www.smartplug.com/
<http://www.smartplug.com/products/inletandconnector.html>
The only problem is, it's only a boat-side connection. Still doesn't
solve the problem of the plug at the marina end getting burned/damaged
by the poor connection on that end.
Ben
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