Shore Power

[wfujewell]

Quick question. Just bought my first big boat with a shore power hook-up. My apologies if my question is overly simplistic but I am learning and need all the help I can get. As such my question is as follows:

When I hook the boat up to shore power, do I need to turn on the battery charger?

In other words, certain electronics (A/C, outlets, microwave, stove, etc.) in the boat will only become operable if I either have shore power hooked up or am running my generator. I was wondering if these electronics ran off of the power provided by the shore power directly or if these things ran off of the batteries which were in turn powered/charged by the shore power.

Thanks for the help.

[rocksandblues]

the 110 stuff (ac, micro, etc) are not running off batteries. always a good idea to charge batteries though while on shore power. If you have a good charger that drops down to trickle you can leave it on.

if you get a leak that taxes the bilge/batteries the charger on will often be the difference

[Wicked Deep Stix]

Quick question. Just bought my first big boat with a shore power hook-up. My apologies if my question is overly simplistic but I am learning and need all the help I can get. As such my question is as follows:

When I hook the boat up to shore power, do I need to turn on the battery charger?

In other words, certain electronics (A/C, outlets, microwave, stove, etc.) in the boat will only become operable if I either have shore power hooked up or am running my generator. I was wondering if these electronics ran off of the power provided by the shore power directly or if these things ran off of the batteries which were in turn powered/charged by the shore power.

Thanks for the help.

The A/C-110V is a seperate system from the batteries which are 12 volt D/C. You power these by either closing the main bus breaker for the generator or the shore power. In some cases small appliances will be run by an inverter hooked up to batteries which turns 12 v dc to 110 V ac but in your case you have a generator for this power need. Most likely your boat has a automatic battery charger that will have a breaker on the A/C panel to be turned on. Its best to leave this on all the time as the charger will adjust its output amps to each connected battery depending on the load on that battery. Hope this helps.