Mastervolt decision....

The decision on the rewiring of TIH has been accelerated by the arrival of the engine. I can either rig up an interim solution or bite the bullet and install, at least part, of the final system. Having studied the matter for some time I firmly believe that a smart distribution system is the way to go. I have yet to see a retrofitted traditional system look good unless it was installed by a very "high end" (read expensive) installer. The labor costs and the costs of cable for a traditional setup certainly make a system such as Mastervolt very attractive.

Now as I understand it;

You run your shore power into an;

Isolation Transformer;



Which stops you frying divers and your hull fittings. And then into a battery charger;



And then via a shunt and connection whatsit



To your batteries.

You then feed the power to lights, bilge pumps, nav equipment, fans and all the other electrical stuff back through the shunt, via a number of these;



using large cables. Each unit can feed 10 individual systems (a lighting circuit, a pump, a refrigerator etc.) of up to 10Amps each (more if combined).

The whole system is monitored by;



and switched using a variation of these, if necessary;



Its all done electronically, even the fuse settings are set using software. The system has a manual backup (blade fuses) in the event of catastrophic failure.


This is the MasterBus USB Interface. I'm sure I'm missing a whole heap of important technical details but the system works for me. Its got to be better than;