Ground and Neutral Isolation Land Shore Power GFCI trips

Aqua_Aura

I finally decided to open my panel 2 years later 😂. This started from connecting to a new GFCI Marina and my boat would trip the breaker. This looks like the neutral and ground are sharing the bus so I guess if I move all my green to one bus and all the white to the other they are no longer shared. After doing a little reading this makes sense a little more, I have done sub panels on houses and many electrical projects but the boat adds some confusion. The boat is basically the sub panel and sub panels don't tie the ground and neutral bar as the main panel will do that. They do however get tied together when using the generator and the input source selector should do this when selecting generator. Not sure how I am gonna make sense of the panel here though, need to do some investigating to see what goes where. 

YYZRC

Mine didn’t have any mingling of green and white. Not sure if that means anything or not.

Aqua_Aura

That's exactly how it is supposed to be. There should be a connection when you operate the generator though. I don't have time to dig into for a couple of weeks since we are leaving next Wednesday for a 6 day boat trip. 

YYZRC

Safe travels!

Aqua_Aura

Also thank you for the picture that straightened it out in my head 🥴. I had to remember how I wired my sub panels at my houses then apply that to the boat and shore power cord, trying to draw a schematic in my head took a minute. 

Grahamu

Sometimes the hot water tank can have a small ground leakage and trip the pedestal GFCI breaker, there might be a thread on it somewhere.

Aqua_Aura

When this initially happened I am able to select shore power and turn on the main breaker. If I turn on any breaker it trips which leads me to believe it is not a single faulted system but a problem with the ground and neutral being bonded. 

LaRea

When my boat showed symptoms like that, it was because the Anderson PowerPole connectors failed at the cockpit breaker switches.  That sort of failure would affect every circuit, just as you are describing.  

https://rinkerboats.vanillacommunities.com/discussion/13379/hazard-warning-anderson-powerpole-connectors-in-shore-power-wiring

Aqua_Aura

I remember your post on that but everything on the boat works perfectly fine in all circumstances except for when I connect to one marinas new GFCI pedestals. Both of my shorepower inlets have the same issue. The ground and neutral should not be on a shared bus that is a fact and from my quick look they definitely seem to be shared from the factory. 

Aqua_Aura

At about 13:00 the real explanation begins but this is a great video laying it out as to why they are not to be bonded. 

https://youtu.be/6QEYg4wX70E

alex8q4

Aqua_Aura, that was a great explanation. Thanks for posting the video!