Any boater that has a shore power connection to their boat will be familiar with the cordset shown above. The plug goes into the shore side socket, often on the pedestal at the marina and the other end connects to the socket on the boat. These cords are in very common use but do suffer from several drawbacks; to connect them the pins have to be aligned and then twisted slightly to lock them into place. In theory this is fine but in reality the sockets wear usually at the dockside terminal and the electrical connection is far from perfect.
In an effort to address some of these concerns makers Smartplug have come up with a new kind of plug and socket. The plug is simply pushed in where it snaps into place and makes a good contact with the pins, so arcing, a common problem with the older style plugs should be eliminated. Pressing in the sprung loaded clips on either side releases the plug, which in normal operation is completely waterproof. The best bit about the new design is that the plug only fits one way round so should save lots of fiddling around in the dark when pulling into the marina at night when you can't see what you are doing.
According to the blurb from Smartplug the socket on the boat can be swapped out in about an hour or less and the mounting holes for the new socket even align with holes from most common standard twist style sockets so no extra holes or making good is required if retrofitting the Samartplug socket on a vessel. Of course this does still not help with the shore connection to which I think we shall be stuck with the old style for some time to come.
Presently the Smartplug is available in 30 and 50 amp versions with a 100 amp model due out soon.
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