Electrical question

[Duckwheat]

I am posting this for a fellow I have met and following their blog as they travel. He's had electrical problems and posted the following question. Additional his boat eats zincs like crazy.

"Any one care to take a guess as to what is happening with our electrical system? When we are hooked up to shore power, all outlets work just fine. When we use the inverter, all outlets work just fine. When I hook up the Honda Generator to the inlet normally used for shorepower, all the outlets on the starboard side don't work and the "reverse polarity" light comes up on the circuit panel. Makes no sense to me. any one have any suggestions?"

I will pass along your suggestions.

DW

[Mi2ndWind]

Might be more to it, but if the problem only happens when the generator is plugged in, it may be a plug on the patch cable miswired. For the info given that's about the best place to start looking for trouble I can think of.

[S/V_Surya]

This is just a wild guess. If inlet is three wire you have power black wire, neutral white wire, and green ground. Normally neutral and ground and are tied together someplace, thus are the same. I would say generator has white and black reversed and thus hot tied to ground. On starborad side neutral and ground are tied together and thus in this case hot and ground tied together which shorts it out and killls breaker. Once breaker is poped port side which is not tied to ground is ok but show reverse polarity. Most appliances will work with polarity reversed.