ACV Panel Display

[Bud Cary]

At my home dock, when I turned the AC power breaker on, the APV display recently started to read just 46 volts even though measuring the actual wiring on the back of the panel with a multimeter shows 120 volts

All of the AC outlets in the boat work. I tried a hair dryer at full blast. The ACV still reads 46, the ACA reads 9 amp and the wattage at the outlet is 1139 watts

So my questions are;

Has the ACV display gone bad or is there a more sinister issue at play ?   If the former, do ACV displays just go bad or does it take something specific to zap it? 1-2 weeks ago we had some severe thunderstorms with lots of local lightening and I'm wondering if that could have been the cause

And lastly, assuming it's just a bad display, does anyone know a good source for replacement?

As always, thanks for any input

Bud Cary 

S/V Pooh, J40 (#82)

[David Jade]

I don’t know if this helps, but recently we were at another dock and when we plugged in, the ACV read suspiciously low – lower than 100v. The marina had no explanation for this but plugging into another outlet on the same pedestal made the issue go away. I’m still not sure if it was really that voltage or not, I didn’t want to chance it. That said, later that night the other outlet tripped it’s breaker (in the middle of the night of course). So something was wrong with that pedestal and apparently others had not noticed before.

 

So my take was, something happened to that pedestal outlet in such a way to make the meter readings wonky as we never saw it again anywhere else. I can’t imagine a scenario where the voltage was actually less than what it should have been, at least not without there being a short and a fire as a result.

 

I can also tell you, lightning recently hit near our home marina (but not a direct hit) and I can tell you that it caused all sorts of weird issues that took time to resolve, both with dock power and onboard systems.

 

Btw, we also saw a pedestal at another marina actually catch on fire this year. I swear it’s not our boat…

 

Hope this helps,

David             _/)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "J/4X Owner's Group" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to j4x-owners-gro...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/j4x-owners-group/7d69065c-ff9e-4a2b-9f9f-dfdb3807a41bn%40googlegroups.com.

[Larry Romano]

You could check the electrical connection on the Ac volt meter. With the boat unplugged! If after doing that, measure the voltage with your DVM on the two post on the back of the AC voltage meter and if the don’t agree the meter has died.

Good luck 

On Sep 21, 2025, at 11:34 AM, David Jade <da...@mutable.net> wrote:



To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/j4x-owners-group/SA0PR03MB54496AA36BE3EC48D9ED4B3AB313A%40SA0PR03MB5449.namprd03.prod.outlook.com.

[Todd Stevens]

Yes, check all the connections.  This summer, I was cleaning up some of the old electrical services on the family ranch and got weird voltage readings like that when one of the legs was disconnected or had a poor connection. No actual amperage available, but odd static voltage readings.  A good physical explanation escapes me at the moment.  

Todd

To view this discussion visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/j4x-owners-group/C4A78336-C9FD-47E2-B45E-B15608E6EC44%40gmail.com.