Major short in generator wiring - Pictures
Had a major short and near fire due to the wiring from my generator this past weekend. While on the road we had the gen running with the a/c going. The wife went to use the microwave and when she did ...
Forum Discussion
Sam Spade wrote:mrmomb wrote:
Interesting that your transfer switch is wired shore power priority.
Seems totally logical to me.
IF you have shore power available and connected, why would you want to get power from the generator ?
Indeed, why would the gen even be running ???
Generator priority over shore power is the most common arrangement with an automatic transfer switch. The main reason, I believe, is that there is a time delay for switching to the priority input and that is generally needed or at least wanted for a generator to let it get up to speed and have its output stable before switching over the load. In particular, it's not at all nice to try to start it under load, and if it were the non-priority power source it would always be starting under load unless shore power were not available.
There are times when one may wish to use generator power even though shore power is available, too. The shore power may be glitchy or unreliable. The voltage may be low (but not so low that the transfer switch fails to register). The generator may be being exercised. Yes, in all these cases one could disconnect from shore power, but if that's needed why bother with having an automatic transfer switch at all? (And, of course, not a few RVs do work fine without one, relying on manually plugging in the supply lead to generator power.)
