Smart Plug Shore Power at West Marine

[@Tech4Homes]

It's about time! This is the coolest piece of non-tech technology for boats that I've seen in a long time. I have personally witnessed the black soot around shore power cord receptacles on many boats... what's that from? It's from an improperly connected cable that doesn't put enough metal to metal connection - consequently the connection overheats to the point where it arcs, causing the soot and making the cable almost impossible to unplug. This solves it all. Insurance company discounts NOW!

[@chuckatwestmarine]

I was informed by a very experienced marine electrician and expert in the ABYC standards that the Smart Plug no longer has the thermal disconnect. Here are his comments: SmartPlug removed the thermostatic disconnect a couple of years ago to comply with ABYC E-11. Although they ran 50A thru a 30A plug/inlet connection for 24 hours with negligible heat rise, the original owner of SmartPlug felt that the addition of the disconnect would provide a marketing benefit offer the traditional Marino/Hubbell systems. The issue was that this was an auto-reset disconnect which is in direct violation of ABYC E-11 which requires a manual reset after a protective device opens. The scenario was: Shore power is interrupted by the thermal disconnect. Boat owner works within the panel board to troubleshoot Thermal disconnect resets when temperature of SmartPlug drops below threshold Boat owner could receive a shock when de-energized circuit becomes energized So, for their marine line, they removed the thermal disconnect although, last time I checked, they would provide it with caveats. Thanks for update! Chuck Hawley, December 2018.

[@WestMarineInc]

Thanks for the update, Chuck!!