50 Amp Surge Protector
I bought a 50 Amp surge protector that plugs into the main RV grounds power box. The lights on the surge protector indicates reverse polarity. Does the connection at the main box have to be fixed to ...
Forum Discussion
winepress wrote:
Not familiar with this protector but I think it is seeing an error on L1 and L2 being in phase.
To get the 100 amp service you have:
L1 50 amp
L2 50 amp
Neutral 50 amp
L1 and L2 together give you 100 amp service.
Normally L1 and L2 are out of phase so neutral never sees more than 50 amp
If L1 and L2 are in the same phase, then neutral could be forced to carry up to 100amps, but is only rated to carry 50 amp. Since neutral is not circuit breaker protected, a potential overload exists. No circuit breaker will trip, but you might smell rubber burning.
The camp worker using a volt meter would not be able to detect any error.
If that's what it is doing, then, that is a very good device indeed.
If the L1 and L2 voltages are in phase the voltage measured across these lines will be zero volts, so this error is easily detected.
The only time I have seen this occur is when the RV site does not really have 50 amp service at the pedestal and has modified an existing 30 amp branch to fit the 50 amp receptacle - same concept of the adapter cable.
If this is what happened, then the breaker will trip when more than 30 amps drawn.
If the main service panel some how had two 50 amp L1 or L2 branches off the same phase bundled together, then yes the neutral could get easily be overloaded.
Having both lines being the same phase should not give an overload condition or the 50 amp - 30 amp adapter cables would never work because the would cause the same fault.
