Troubleshooting the Ship: 380V Volvo generator wouldn't auto start!
12Alongside the 82 Litre Turbo Diesel Engine there were 3 other engines. The 16 cylinder Deutz is for powering the Schottel, the other two were generators for power (220 & 380V). The Volvo was the only one that started electrically, the others using compressed air from tanks. The Volvo had an auto start feature to toggle so it would kick in if we "Black out" (lost power), we need power to steer so quite an important safety feature! It could also be used to power the compressor for us to fill the air tanks to start the other engines if we weren't hooked up to shore power.
The Engineer and Electrician were a little stumped. The batteries next to the Volvo engine were good but the panel was lighting up like a Christmas tree. I watched it whilst it tried to start and noticed the first error light to come up was for lack of 24V power.
I found a pair of "mystery batteries" that were not in good shape, suggested we swap in the Deutz engine batteries as we don't use the Schottel anyway. Sure enough the Volvo then kicked in with Autostart. I then show starting the harbour generator for 220V power, "manually" shut down the 380V Volvo just to see if the Autostart would kick in again when the harbour generator power was stopped by one of the other guys...which it did! :)