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  2. [Amel Yacht Owners] Climma A/C ground fault?

Re: [Amel Yacht Owners] Climma A/C ground fault?

Bill & Judy Rouse <yahoogroups@...>
 

Gary,

I am certainly no electrician or expert, but I'll share my thoughts...

First guess: I am 99% sure that your power may be wired wrong in an attempt by someone to bridge US and EU power. The blue wire you mention should be the EU "Return" line. The brown is the "Hot" line. With that blue line connected, everything off, and disconnected from shore power do you have continuity between the 220 power line yellow/green and blue? If there is not, without turning on the generator or plugging into shore power, turn ON the AC breaker for the unit in question and check continuity. I believe that if you find continuity you need to find an electrician.

Next test is plug into shore power. Have all of the breakers off. Check for voltage between blue and shore power yellow/green. If you have voltage there is a shore power wiring problem...find an electrician.

Second guess is that the ground fault is at the A/C that you removed the return (blue) wire. Removing that will prevent the ground fault to be sensed. Possibly the saltwater path and the electric current path are somehow crossed?

I hope these random thoughts help you find the issue.

BTW, I believe that the most common ground fault on a SM that is wired correctly is electro-thermal heating elements. Most common is the water heater, followed by the SM2k dishwasher, then the SM2k clothes washer.

I have seen way too many SMs shore power wired incorrectly for US schemes. Check the DVD I gave you for a job named: Shore Power Wiring or something like that.

Bill Rouse
BeBe Amel 53 #387
Sent from my tablet
+1832-380-4970 USA Voice Mail

On May 2, 2016 10:04 AM, "Gary Wells gary@... [amelyachtowners]" <amelyachtowners@...> wrote:

 

Greetings, SM 209 is trying to tease me with an intermittent trip of the master breaker.
Three air conditioners (we normally only ever run two of them simultaneously) everything aboard works fine until, for no discernable reason the master breaker will trip at either genset start or dock plug-in and not reset.
I first thought it might be a problem at the dock with stray current or bad power at the post because it had not occurred before. A few days later it did it again on genset.
I'm not sure I can explain the luck in discovering that if the blue wired leg of the forward air conditioner was disconnected from the system it solved the issue, but that's what it seems to be.
While I cannot recreate the fault on demand, I can solve it by pulling that A/C offline.
I did notice a bit of corrosion across the big (40ùf) compressor start capacitor so I changed that out. I changed out the compressor start relay a year ago. It seemed to solve it until a couple of days ago when it tripped again right upon genset start.
This morning it's at it again. I think the relay and capacitor were not players.

Any ideas on where to start with this? The unit is NOT powered on when this happens so it has to be something going into the the control box and I'm not sure where to start looking for a 0.03Amp leak. I am fairly certain it's not directly related to fan motor, compressor or temperature control 'modules' since nothing is active at the time of the trip. Maybe it's a stray chafe somewhere along that run, or some strange short at the connector block but I can't puzzle out why it only happens once in every 20 genset starts.

Thanks,

Gary W.
"Adagio", SM 209
BVI
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