AC 20amp breaker trips mid day
Just came from Vegas 103 deg with no AC problems. At our new location which is also about 103 deg, the ac compressor would cycle and the fan would stay on with the thermostat on auto. Now it trips th...
Forum Discussion
road-runner wrote:
Hard for me to tell what some of the posts are saying. I'll throw in that from actual measurements I made on a 13.5 kbtu Dometic air conditioner, in the voltage range of 98 to 122, I found the following:
-As voltage goes down, current draw increases
-As voltage goes down, power factor improves. Worst case was .93 at 122 volts.
-As voltage goes down, total power consumption goes down
With this particular air conditioner, my take is that boosting the voltage is good for the air conditioner, at the expense of slightly higher power consumption.
“As the voltage goes down, the power factor improves”
Wrong, as the voltage goes down, the sinusoidal relationship between current and the voltage begins to widen thereby worsening the power factor - in the ideal, the power factor should be at 1, this is what the capacitor corrects for to keep this relationship in phase (while discharging at 180 deg of sag) and also why its important to use the ‘right sized’ capacitor to overcome this reactance...But you didn’t say how you are determining the p/f...
BTW, at 98v your air conditioner may start to think its a toaster!!
