Hughs Autoformer
I was wondering if anyone out there has any experience with the Hughs autoformer. Its suppose to give the voltage a boost if the incoming voltage drops below a specified limit.
Forum Discussion
What parks mean by an Autoformer "stealing power" is probably this: Watts equals amount of current times the amount of voltage. If your RV is needing so many watts of energy when the park voltage sags below a certain point, then the Autoformer ups the voltage that your RV sees. It can only continue to deliver the higher voltage to you RV at the cost of taking more current from the campsite's power pole so overall wattage being supplied to your RV remains the same.
When your Autoformer takes more current from the power pole, the voltage gets even lower for the rest of the campers in the campground because it is overall current draw on the campground's power poles that makes it's overall campground voltage lower in the first place. Soooo ... Autoformer users are experiencing great power in their RVs at the expense of worse power (lower voltage) at the power poles used by the rest of the (non-Autoformer) campers. In other words, your voltage winds up being higher than it was by making the voltage a little bit lower than it was for the rest of the campers.
This could be interpreted as "stealing" from the other campers. I guess it's alright for all of the campers to wind up with ruined appliances from an inadequately powered campground, but not alright for a single Autoformer user to save their appliances while all other campers get their appliances ruined. Of course it's extreme hot weather or extreme cold weather that causes temporary power over-draws on the campground's system. The proper solution is for the campground to have it's power grid rewired to a higher amperage service so nobody's voltage sags even if every power pole is delivering it's maximum rated current to each RV connected to every power pole during extreme weather.
When your Autoformer takes more current from the power pole, the voltage gets even lower for the rest of the campers in the campground because it is overall current draw on the campground's power poles that makes it's overall campground voltage lower in the first place. Soooo ... Autoformer users are experiencing great power in their RVs at the expense of worse power (lower voltage) at the power poles used by the rest of the (non-Autoformer) campers. In other words, your voltage winds up being higher than it was by making the voltage a little bit lower than it was for the rest of the campers.
This could be interpreted as "stealing" from the other campers. I guess it's alright for all of the campers to wind up with ruined appliances from an inadequately powered campground, but not alright for a single Autoformer user to save their appliances while all other campers get their appliances ruined. Of course it's extreme hot weather or extreme cold weather that causes temporary power over-draws on the campground's system. The proper solution is for the campground to have it's power grid rewired to a higher amperage service so nobody's voltage sags even if every power pole is delivering it's maximum rated current to each RV connected to every power pole during extreme weather.
