Duncan from Puget Marine Electronics came out for a few hours to investigate. We cycled all of the AC devices, but could not get the breaker to trip. North Pacific offered to replace some components, but given how intermittent the failure is, I’m loath to tear apart a perfectly good system to try and track down what is a relatively minor (though potentially problematic) fault. Without a repro case, it’s very difficult to figure out what is happening. I had a theory that we might measure the AC devices one-at-a-time to see if any of them are leaking a small amount (as an indicator of maybe a bigger leak during some cycles) but the wires are noisy enough that it’s hard to track those milliamps via a handheld meter.
Duncan proposed building a monitoring rig and temporarily installing it on the shore power connection. This would log all power use so if/when the fault happens, we have the log data. Seems a good plan. We’ll have hard data to help track down the fault and we don’t need to replace what are likely perfectly good components. The Magnum Inverter/Charger has no logging at all, so it would be nice to get some visibility. Bill from North Pacific also kicked around moving us to a Victron system. He’s a huge fan of how configurable they are; but, again, I’m not going to tear out a perfectly good Inverter/Charger to track this down. There’s a very good chance we’d replace the unit only to find the failure was some tiny short somewhere. The downside of this is it could be months before it happens again. Log storage could be an issue.
Boat Internet
I really hate boat internet. I have been limping along with a relatively simple system based on the Netgear modem Steve recommended. It worked great until Verizon unceremoniously cancelled my plan and put me on some lame 15GB plan that seems to top out almost immediately. Verizon has really driven customer service to astonishingly new lows.
I’m now ready to install a real system using some of the more updated components recommended over at SeaBits (Steve is a national treasure for cutting through all the BS with these system designs). Someday soon, I dream that a company will come along and offer unlimited broadband over LTE, and all of the companies squeezing people with byzantine plans and absurdly low data caps will lose all of their customers and all of their revenue. On that day, the schadenfreude will be delicious.