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hi everyone jeff cote here with  votingtechtalk.com so we've got a  question from a fellow boater  and uh this boater says jeff thanks for  your recent video about fusing solar  panels  you're welcome but i have to ask what is  wrong with a voltage spike  where is the voltage spike measured  how large can it be why does it happen  follow-up questions are always the best  questions because then you bring the  geek out of me  okay  so let's go back to our childhood  why was my childhood mom asking me to do  things around the house  and me having a lot of things to do  because i was building tree houses  street forts  tons of crazy stuff and chores were not  at the  top of my list so i was always trying to  get my chores done as quickly as humanly  possible  so i could go back to my tree house and  keep building my little fortress  and i remember actually we had vacuums  when i was growing up that were actually  plugged in  and as you would leave one room the cord  at one point would be too short  and i would actually yank the cord out  of the wall by doing a sort of a  whiplash  and then it would come out of the wall  and i would literally see sparks  coming out of that and you know as a kid  you're like that's just that's what  happens  but when you're actually disconnecting  uh certain things  it's very possible especially if it's  not done quickly that you might actually  have a voltage  spike so you can have two things you  know voltage is a point  right it's it doesn't matter if it could  be 120 it could be 220 it could be 12  volts it could be dc it could be ac it  doesn't matter  and the challenge is when you disconnect  something under a load  right there's current running through it  as you're disconnecting that  it's not happens there's no such thing  as an instant  an instant is still an amount of time  nothing  happens like that nothing  you can measure in milliseconds it  doesn't matter it takes time to do  anything so what happens is when you  disconnect  any sort of appliance on your boat even  a vacuum cleaner when i was a kid  you're actually causing scorching on the  contacts  and you would actually see the plug on  the vacuum would actually start getting  tarnished  and that voltage spike can actually  cause  also really really high amperages  so for solar panels what the  manufacturers want  is remember the solar panels are  actually creating energy  current it doesn't matter if it's a pull  or it's a push  right it's still current and what  they're trying to do is they want to  make sure that when you disconnect your  solar panels  from your batteries you do so while the  panels are  not actually producing any current so  what i do on my own boat i actually  literally put blankets on top of the  panels or i'll do it at  nighttime right or before the sun comes  up but if it's sunny outside  and you want to be safe you don't want  to disconnect anything  under load what you're going to do is  you're going to put a blanket  it would be the similar thing that we  end up doing for shore power connections  no one should disconnect shore power  right literally at an outlet by just  simply disconnecting the boat from shore  power  without going in the boat and actually  turning all the breakers off  turning the actually ac main breaker off  and then you can disconnect something so  you want no current to be on the line  when you're disconnecting it and a  voltage spike  can actually damage equipment it does  happen now it's happening less and less  because a lot of the electrical  appliances that we have on our boats  have  wider ranges where they can tolerate a  certain voltage  a lot of appliances now will work from  let's say  10 volts to 26 volts or 28 or 32  they're they're saying it's going to  work at 12 volts it's going to work at  24 volts  but some other appliances want a very  very  narrow range they're saying it can only  work from  11 to 14 eight and if the voltage goes  higher than that  the appliance the device can get damaged  so you  want absolutely as a border to avoid  ever ever ever  disconnecting or connecting anything  under load right things should be off  when you're connecting them  and should be even when you're  connecting them on or off  same thing you don't want to have your  vacuum cleaner turned on when you're  actually plugging in the wall so that it  just  turns on as soon as you plug in the wall  you plug it in  and then you turn your vacuum cleaner on  so you do you  you worry about voltage spikes because  we worry about keeping  our electrical appliances on our boat to  work  and to be safe and that's why we do the  same thing for solar so great question  and thanks for asking thank you for  watching this pys video if you've got  further questions  ask them down below or go on our website and don't forget to subscribe  and thanks for watching  English (auto-generated)