How to protect against poor RV park power?
We stopped at an RV park (an old and poorly maintained KOA) in hot weather. Plugged in the 30 amp cord. The power pedestal looked sketchy -- the socket was chipped and improperly mounted. Fired ...
Forum Discussion
Obviously fancier and more expensive tools can do more but in order or preference:
1) Plug in Voltmeter: Pick a plug you can see conveniently in our RV and just leave it plugged in. Runs about $10-20. Cheap but the downside is if you aren't watching, it won't do anything but when you first plug in, you can check the voltage and if it gets hot, you can quickly check and if needed turn off the Air/Con.
2) Voltage Booster (Autoformer): We are talking about low voltage not spikes or other transient issues. Autoformers will boost the voltage by around 10%. So if you have 100v at the pedestal, your RV will see 110v...Quite a bit more expensive and if the low voltage issue is excessive, it can still cause issues (ie: if the pedestal voltage is 90v, your RV will only see 99v)
3) Automatic cutoff device: Senses the voltage and if it drops below a minimum threshold, it will cut the power to the RV. Again quite a bit more expensive than a simple voltmeter. Most cut out around 102-104v...there is debate but many believe that is too low (of course if set higher momentary dips would cut power).
4) Large Inverter & Large Battery Charger: This isn't commonly used but battery chargers usually aren't too impacted by low voltage. You basically run a very large battery charger feeding a large battery bank and then run a large inverter off the battery bank. The inverter always provides good voltage. This is at least an order of magnitude more expensive than options 2 or 3. This still does need a power supply as the battery bank will quickly run down running air/con.
5) Run a generator: As long as the generator is properly sized, you totally avoid the issue. Some parks will give you a hassle about running the generator but the response to that is provide the contracted 120v power.
1) Plug in Voltmeter: Pick a plug you can see conveniently in our RV and just leave it plugged in. Runs about $10-20. Cheap but the downside is if you aren't watching, it won't do anything but when you first plug in, you can check the voltage and if it gets hot, you can quickly check and if needed turn off the Air/Con.
2) Voltage Booster (Autoformer): We are talking about low voltage not spikes or other transient issues. Autoformers will boost the voltage by around 10%. So if you have 100v at the pedestal, your RV will see 110v...Quite a bit more expensive and if the low voltage issue is excessive, it can still cause issues (ie: if the pedestal voltage is 90v, your RV will only see 99v)
3) Automatic cutoff device: Senses the voltage and if it drops below a minimum threshold, it will cut the power to the RV. Again quite a bit more expensive than a simple voltmeter. Most cut out around 102-104v...there is debate but many believe that is too low (of course if set higher momentary dips would cut power).
4) Large Inverter & Large Battery Charger: This isn't commonly used but battery chargers usually aren't too impacted by low voltage. You basically run a very large battery charger feeding a large battery bank and then run a large inverter off the battery bank. The inverter always provides good voltage. This is at least an order of magnitude more expensive than options 2 or 3. This still does need a power supply as the battery bank will quickly run down running air/con.
5) Run a generator: As long as the generator is properly sized, you totally avoid the issue. Some parks will give you a hassle about running the generator but the response to that is provide the contracted 120v power.
