Exercise genny while on shore power?
New to on board generators. Parked for the winter with 50 amp service, and it's time to exercise the genny. Do I have to disconnect first? 2006 Bounder, Onan 5500, ATS
Forum Discussion
It's not about which one will control the ATS ,
It's about the ATS possibly being slow and sitcky and crossing the power feeds, it's about bad habits, doing something the wrong way, until the cumulative damage to the ATS contacts reaches the point of disaster
If somebody can not bother (does not think it's important) to unplug the shore cord when exercising the generator, are they going to be bothered to take the time to shut down heavy loads before pushing that start button, will they shut down and then restart the A/C or the Heat Pump ? Natural human desire will get more lazy and do less work for that chore each month, up until the day something goes wrong and bad caca happens
Note: I don't consider the WH electric element or electric heaters a dangerous to the generator load, several portable heaters would certainly be a decent current load, but the danger to switching loads is electric Motors specially compressor Motors with their heavy stall currents, back emf from mismatched non synced power phase cycles between generator, and shore power, the generator will not be phase matched to the shore power already being used by the motor, switching a running compressor motor will cause an EMF SPIKE and HARD HIGH current spike on the GENERATOR, if a contact in the ATS happens to stick, the generator is the no contest hands down looser in the power output bout with shore power, and it might not be the only thing to suffer
Note 2: this forum has had this discussion many times,but in reverse order of connections
Most times it is about pluging into shore power at the campground when arriving with the generator running and A/C on.. The RV owner does not want to shut down his A/C for ten minutes or so needed , stop AC switch power restart AC ,
And we get 1 or 2 something went wrong topics each summer because of this, damaged generator or both genny and the A/C, the ats was already tanked because of doing this previously
It's about the ATS possibly being slow and sitcky and crossing the power feeds, it's about bad habits, doing something the wrong way, until the cumulative damage to the ATS contacts reaches the point of disaster
If somebody can not bother (does not think it's important) to unplug the shore cord when exercising the generator, are they going to be bothered to take the time to shut down heavy loads before pushing that start button, will they shut down and then restart the A/C or the Heat Pump ? Natural human desire will get more lazy and do less work for that chore each month, up until the day something goes wrong and bad caca happens
Note: I don't consider the WH electric element or electric heaters a dangerous to the generator load, several portable heaters would certainly be a decent current load, but the danger to switching loads is electric Motors specially compressor Motors with their heavy stall currents, back emf from mismatched non synced power phase cycles between generator, and shore power, the generator will not be phase matched to the shore power already being used by the motor, switching a running compressor motor will cause an EMF SPIKE and HARD HIGH current spike on the GENERATOR, if a contact in the ATS happens to stick, the generator is the no contest hands down looser in the power output bout with shore power, and it might not be the only thing to suffer
Note 2: this forum has had this discussion many times,but in reverse order of connections
Most times it is about pluging into shore power at the campground when arriving with the generator running and A/C on.. The RV owner does not want to shut down his A/C for ten minutes or so needed , stop AC switch power restart AC ,
And we get 1 or 2 something went wrong topics each summer because of this, damaged generator or both genny and the A/C, the ats was already tanked because of doing this previously
