Background: My boat has a Xantrex Freedom HF inverter/charger. It was professionally installed. Here is what happens:
1- At my marina when connected to shore: no problem. Shore electrical is many years old.
2- At other marinas with new pedestals (ELCI-style), shore breaker is tripped after a few seconds, indicating a >30 mA leak between neutral and ground.
Per this forum and others, this problem is usually related to improper wiring of the inverter, mainly the need to separate the pre-inverter neutral bus from the post-inverter neutral bus. In layman's terms: place air con and water heater (which only run on shore power) before inverter. My boat has a common ground and neutral bus for all.
So far so good.
My issue is as follows. With the shore cable OFF, I measure 170 kOhms between neutral and ground (at the connector). This is because the Xantrex bonds the AC neutral and ground when not connected to shore. It breaks that bond after a few seconds when shore power is detected.
To make sure that I correctly identify my problem (improper wiring or inverter failure), I want to simply disconnect the heater and see if I still trip the ELCI. However, my marina does not have pedestals with ELCI!
How can I continue to troubleshoot and test?
1- At my marina when connected to shore: no problem. Shore electrical is many years old.
2- At other marinas with new pedestals (ELCI-style), shore breaker is tripped after a few seconds, indicating a >30 mA leak between neutral and ground.
Per this forum and others, this problem is usually related to improper wiring of the inverter, mainly the need to separate the pre-inverter neutral bus from the post-inverter neutral bus. In layman's terms: place air con and water heater (which only run on shore power) before inverter. My boat has a common ground and neutral bus for all.
So far so good.
My issue is as follows. With the shore cable OFF, I measure 170 kOhms between neutral and ground (at the connector). This is because the Xantrex bonds the AC neutral and ground when not connected to shore. It breaks that bond after a few seconds when shore power is detected.
To make sure that I correctly identify my problem (improper wiring or inverter failure), I want to simply disconnect the heater and see if I still trip the ELCI. However, my marina does not have pedestals with ELCI!
How can I continue to troubleshoot and test?