{"id":33188,"date":"2026-04-24T11:54:51","date_gmt":"2026-04-24T09:54:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.victronenergy.com\/blog\/?p=33188"},"modified":"2026-04-24T11:54:51","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T09:54:51","slug":"automotive-diagnostics-expert-untangles-marine-power-problems","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.victronenergy.com\/blog\/2026\/04\/24\/automotive-diagnostics-expert-untangles-marine-power-problems\/","title":{"rendered":"Automotive diagnostics expert untangles Marine power problems"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jake Archer’s diagnostics experience gained in the automotive industry, working with luxury vehicles, has unexpectedly led to him being in demand on the water.<\/p>\n

Marine power installations can get complicated – combining AC and DC power distribution; battery charging from multiple sources: generators, alternator, solar; connections to shore power (of variable quality); together with the need to take care of special-case grounding in a way which also prevents galvanic corrosion.<\/p>\n

Cowboy<\/em> is a 74 foot steel-hulled luxury motor vessel with a working-boat pedigree. Built for long-range exploration it’s packed with industrial-grade marine equipment including a Cummins 440hp diesel engine, two power generators, electric steering, and nine tanks holding thousands of gallons of fuel, fresh water, black water – all of which need to be fluid balanced to keep the vessel in trim.

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Jake and his team at Marine Diagnostic Services<\/a> based in New Bern, North Carolina, were invited on board to take a look at a recent power installation in which the inverters, battery, and generator were not communicating properly. They’d been installed by engineers who wanted to achieve a good result for the owner, but couldn’t.<\/p>\n

Subsequent interventions had also failed to achieve an automated power system. Instead, top quality devices had been installed with no unified goal, resulting in frequent power dropouts; lots of ‘if this happens then do that…<\/em>‘ manual interventions; together with unexplained power anomalies.<\/p>\n

Boat owner Jim Price<\/em> [Headline image, centre] also experienced battery storage limitations well below his requirement; and the manual switching was keeping him on his toes running from one end of the boat to the other. In short, the fun went out of boating.<\/p>\n

New Insight<\/h4>\n

Jake’s analytical approach – checking voltages, strain testing, thermal imaging and simply tugging on cables to see if they were properly crimped – revealed the boats problems one by one. There were quite a few.<\/p>\n

Rebuilding the system would take a while, but the result would be the difference between night and day.<\/p>\n

Installation as-built<\/h4>\n

Taking a bird’s eye view, the boat\u2019s power supply had not been designed or installed with an overall unifying vision. Its various parts didn’t work together. Inverter installation was incomplete – there were four 24V 5000VA inverters mounted on the wall, but only two were actually connected, and those hadn’t been correctly configured. Cable lengths were inconsistent, which is a major issue in paralleled inverter systems.<\/p>\n

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<\/div><\/a> *Some of the original wiring in the cabinet as new work began.<\/p><\/div>\n

AC<\/h4>\n

AC wiring in the cabinet was untidy and poorly executed, with incorrect bonding and a shore-based grounding arrangement. The bonding was configured after<\/em> the inverters – like a house – creating double bonds. While this bonding method can comply with the American Boat and Yacht Council (ABYC) standards – of which MDS is a member – it must be executed with careful attention to the rest of the system.<\/p>\n

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<\/div><\/a> *Checking the quality of the waveform to determine why the Quattro is rejecting power.<\/p><\/div>\n

The shore-power inlet arrangement was a 50A cable with an IsoBoost Transformer whilst a vessel this size could easily make use of a 100 Amp service. The boat system was relying on load balancing and other workarounds to run devices at peak supply because large AC loads were destabilising the system.<\/p>\n

When the air conditioning started up, for example, peak loading of the generator would cause the power output quality to suffer forcing the Quattro Inverter\/Chargers to take over the load<\/em> instead of operating as a charger for the batteries. It was later discovered that a failed capacitor which should have been providing a soft start to one of the air-conditioning units was faulty, and was contributing to the instability.<\/p>\n

Also, the yard had ordered 230V European single-phase Quattros which were incorrect for the intended split-phase 240V setup.<\/p>\n

Generator<\/h4>\n

The generators were failing to autostart\/autostop when the batteries dropped or rose through a pre-set State-of-Charge or Voltage parameters with the result that the owner had to continually monitor the batteries himself, and manually start the generator.<\/p>\n

DC<\/strong><\/p>\n

On the DC side some battery cabling and terminations were so insecure that a tug-test was enough to pull the 4\/0 cables out of their lugs. There were 100 foot cable runs to the generators, inverters and alternators.

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Thermal<\/strong><\/p>\n

During early testing the team discovered overheating anomalies at terminations suggesting high-resistance, poor distribution, and inadequate switching components.<\/p>\n

Tank<\/strong><\/p>\n

The boat had an archaic voltage-based tank monitoring system and, surprisingly, there was no practical way of monitoring tank levels where the owner actually needed it – in the engine room. Without gauges where fuel transfer is carried out, the owner would have to stop work during tank pumping and visit the bridge to read the gauge levels in order to see how he was getting on!

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Problem Resolutions<\/h4>\n

Now that the problems have been resolved and all the advanced features are enabled, for owner, Jim, the standout result is that he no longer needs to supervise his power system – it just runs itself.<\/p>\n

Most noticeably the Air Conditioning system – which consumes a lot of energy – switches in and out seamlessly. There are no power trips, and there is always<\/em> sufficient power to run the AC service. In fact the whole boat can be run from the battery storage.<\/p>\n

Over several months Jake and the MDS team, some of whom are individual members of the ABYC, rewired most of the DC and AC circuits. He also:<\/p>\n