Switch Hitting

Fourteen years ago I wrote several articles extolling the virtues of digital switching systems (DSS) and explaining why this technology was going to soon dominate the world of boat wiring and electrical systems. I was right in one sense—the technology is now becoming mainstream—however, my timing was off by more than a decade. What took so long?

A conventional distribution system concentrates most of the switching functions for a boat’s circuits at the navigation station. To do this, the wiring for all these circuits must be brought up into a single breaker box, adding considerable distances to many circuits. To avoid voltage drop, cable sizes also have to be increased. The result is a substantial bundle of relatively large cables coming off the back of the breaker panel and then running all over the boat.

Electrical systems that utilize