Marine electrical maintenance is both planned and reactive.
Reactive maintenance occurs when things start to go wrong.
An example of reactive maintenance, is a noisy bearing, in a marine Induction Motor.
Ships are designed to be more fault tolerant, than a shoreside electrical scheme.
This ensures that crucial systems continue to operate.
An example of a crucial system, is the ships steering gear, or communications systems.
On land, an electrical fault, will trigger an RCD, or Residual Current Device.
This is because the priority, is to preserve humans and livestock, from potential electric shock.
Things on board ships, are slightly different.
The need to keep essential systems running, means that a single fault, is allowed.
It is essential however that any fault that occurs, is quickly rectified.
A single fault within a ships electrical system, will trigger a warning, on the alarm panel.
This won’t shut down the electrical system, unless a second fault occurs.
This gives engineers, time to investigate and repair the electrical fault.
There are many reasons for electrical faults on ships, and a course is available, on marine electrical maintenance training.
There are also a number of techniques for rapid fault finding of ships electrical faults.