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Shwthomas1975's avatar
Jul 18, 2017

Running ac from generator

Afternoon. I recently purchased a champion 3100/2800 watt inverter generator. I am using this in my 21 foot hybrid camper with a 13500 but ac. This unit seems to struggle to get the compressor to kick on. After further research I am seeing that I should switch the fridge to gas and turn off the power converter as it takes about 1000 watts at times to charge the battery and somewhere around 500!watts to run fridge.
The fridge is easy, but I'm not sure how to make it so the the generator doesn't power the converter/charger? There doesn't seem to be a breaker for it.
Any help would be greatly appreciated

36 Replies

  • I have 4 breakers plus the main 30 amp. How would I tell which breaker runs the converter? If plugged in or on generator everything works.
    What would be the sign that would tell me if that's the right breaker to turn off the converter?
  • ktmrfs's avatar
    ktmrfs
    Explorer III
    yup, don't try charging the battery, running the HWH on electric, fridge on electric AND start the AC. Actually, you'd be best to run everything you can on propane while running the AC and have the batteries mostly charged before starting the AC. then you should be able to keep the converter on.


    And, by NEC code, a 30A service in a trailer can only have something like 5 breakers if you don't have a load shed device. Since the AC, microwave and HWH must be on their own dedicated breakers by code because of the power draw, that only leaves 2 other breakers free. So...... virtually every one I've seen the converter is on one of the 2 breakers left for the outlets.

    Which is somewhat problematic, since if the converter is working properly, if your charging a discharged battery bank, it will be drawing in excess of 1000W, and that doesn't leave much for everything else on that breaker.
  • Is there a list of the breaker assignments on the converter itself? The converter "might" be combined with something else, although I doubt it.

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