Carver Owners Forum

So I'm wanting to add an inverter/charger and some monitoring capability (as well as a dedicated house bank) to my 1996 455. I think I finally have a grasp on how I want the future system to look, but my problem now is I can't find ANYTHING with any details about how the original electrical system was wired. In the owner's manual for both DC and AC Systems there's a schematics page... But it's blank and says "Not available at time of printing" which is less than helpful. Anybody know where I can find one, or who can at least help me understand where the shore power goes between the inlet on the stern and the breaker panel?

I can't speak specifically to the 455, but for boats of similar style and vintage the the incoming power usually goes from the shore entrance to a box near or behind the main breaker panel. This box is the auto-transfer function between incoming shore power and the onboard genset. Then the output of that box goes to the main AC panel.

The other possibility is going straight to the main panel as an "AC Main" and a separate generator breaker with a locking device so only one can be chosen at a time. Could also be labeled ship and shore. Have even seen some with a rotary switch to select between ship and shore.

My 97 405 has the shore power coming in straight to the electrical panel. No auto transfer. The switch over to genset is manual switches in the panel.

Thanks for the info, that helps! Sounds like I'll just need to run the Shore down to the Victron and back up to the panel, same with generator, and the Victron has auto-switching so I'll have to figure out how to rewire the panel to accommodate for that.

You really should think about what all you want on the inverter. Usually, if you already are equipped with a genset, you'd be using the inverter to minimize genset runtime - or at least how many times a day you run it, and just use it to recharge the batteries. So the genset may not run less hours, just more rare on starts (maybe once per day) while you still have AC available at any time or things like microwaves, coffeepots or blenders.

You also want to figure out if the inverter is going to be running the HVAC. That would require a much larger battery bank to do any good. There are a few threads on here with discussions about this.