Charge Controller/Converter issue?
I'm new here, thanks for having me. I'm also new to RV'ing and have run into a confusing issue with a new to me RV I bought a few months ago. While hooked to a generator I noticed my box fan seemed to...
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Most portable generators do not have the ground wire bonded to the neutral wire, and indeed have the output floating with respect to ground. (This ground is also rarely an earth ground since one doesn't tend to install or attach to a grounding rod, but that's immaterial).
AC appliances only get power from the hot and neutral lines, so the voltage there is all that matters for their operation. 120V there is normal. Seeing 65V between the ground pin and hot and neutral just indicates that the ground line, not really connected to anything, is tending to float about halfway with respect to the power lines, and that's about what one might expect. If you use one of the three light outlet testers, it will indicate open ground, which is also expected since the ground and neutral are not bonded together, which is what it is actually detecting.
("Bonding" in this discussion simply means having the two lines shorted together at their source; in a house, this generally happens at the service entrance or the main electric panel. In an RV with a built-in generator, the built-in generator bonds the neutral and ground lines at the built-in generator, but portable generators usually don't have a bonded output for electrical code reasons that don't really matter here.)
Your fan problem is unrelated to these 65V measurements.
AC appliances only get power from the hot and neutral lines, so the voltage there is all that matters for their operation. 120V there is normal. Seeing 65V between the ground pin and hot and neutral just indicates that the ground line, not really connected to anything, is tending to float about halfway with respect to the power lines, and that's about what one might expect. If you use one of the three light outlet testers, it will indicate open ground, which is also expected since the ground and neutral are not bonded together, which is what it is actually detecting.
("Bonding" in this discussion simply means having the two lines shorted together at their source; in a house, this generally happens at the service entrance or the main electric panel. In an RV with a built-in generator, the built-in generator bonds the neutral and ground lines at the built-in generator, but portable generators usually don't have a bonded output for electrical code reasons that don't really matter here.)
Your fan problem is unrelated to these 65V measurements.
