Friday, September 7, 2007

Shorepower

This week we wrestled with shore power. 110v / 60Hz, 230v / 50Hz and/or 220v / 60Hz? Isolation transformers, solid state or toroidal transformers? In the end we decided to further simplify the electrical system (always a good thing). We decided to accept 220v/60Hz and 230v/ 50Hz shore power, but it's really any 200+ volt power with either one or two hot legs. The only components connected to shore power will be the charger and the hot water heater and neither of them is very fussy about voltage or frequency. So we eliminated the isolation transformers all together saving time, weight and money. With the exception of the water heater, all the other AC consumers will be run from the inverter which will produce nice clean 110v / 60Hz power.