Hi,
My ship is going on the hard for the winter. I would like to keep the inverter running to power my modem and a security camera, but not connect it to shore power.
Can this be done safely? I will keep the battery charged with my solar panels and can connect a separate bluepower victron charger every once in a while to keep the battery healthy.
Any safety issues here?
If it’s in England, solar power definitely won’t be enough to power the inverter. You’d need a very large PV system.
Have you measured how much current it draws? And have you worked out the battery capacity, the charger’s power output and how long it takes to charge?
If they’re not lithium batteries, the risk is no greater than in water.
If the internal earth circuit is properly wired through all the sockets and terminated in the distribution board, there’s no reason not to.
But if you have shore power connected (while the system is set to Mains ignore), things may look different depending on the input circuitry.
I have an isolation transformer between the shore power inlet and the boat’s internal circuit, so it is galvancally isolated (earth from shore is never connected to earth on board).
If I want to use shore power while on the hard, I would need to make a change inside the isolation transformer to connect earth. I don’t want to do that so I will not use shore power (not through the inlet anyway).
In case I want to temporarily charge the battery, I want to run a standalone charger (Victron Blue Smart IP65) that I plug into an extension chord and not use the internal charger (because I don’t want to plug in the shore power).
Both a modem and a security camera are low power devices and typically take a low voltage input. The inverter is likely the main power draw. Can you power them from your battery (may require one or two small DC-DC converters)? That’s assuming your battery is sufficiently sized for the continuous load and you have a sufficient PV array.
Thanks for this tip! I hadn’t thought about this option so I looked up the power needed and bought a 12V 100W DP device that is indeed able to power both my modem and camera direclty from my 12V outlet.
So no need for 230V on board this winter 