Overloading my Victron Multiplus II
I’ve had a gremlin I’ve been searching for and FINALLY found it! My inverter was overloading and I even blew a 400 amp fuse. This had me a little more than worried. I’ve been searching for this thing for a few days and finally found it! I narrowed it down to one of the AC’s but I wasn’t sure why they would have started acting up. I’ve been able to pull my AC’s on battery power for a short period of time when the power goes out due to the fact I installed soft starts in both units. Then all of a sudden the inverter started overloading. It took me a while to narrow it down to what the overload was coming from then the power went out and all I had on were the fridge and AC’s. So I looked at my alarm log s and it said overload on line 1. I thought ok, cool that has to be the living room AC. I got up on the roof and couldn’t see anything wrong with the AC. or the soft start. But I thought well, maybe a capacitor went out? But then as I was digging into the issue later that day I noticed all the power while running on batteries was coming through line 1. I knew for a fact I wired both AC’s on separate lines so this puzzled me. I thought what’s going on did something short out in the inverter? So I dig in some more and learned when on shore power the AC’s do show to be on separate lines but when the inverter switches to batteries it bonds both lines. So, the alarm would always show to be on line 1. So, I got back up on the roof and inspected the other AC. Nothing caught my eye on the unit itself so I looked into the soft start. THERE WAS WATER INSIDE THE SOFT START! The circuit board was shorting out. So the good news is I know what was causing the issue and the inverter doesn’t appear to be damaged. Now I just won’t run the bedroom AC until I can pick up a new soft start. We will be at the Grand Design National Rally in a little over a week so I’ll pick one up there. Water and electricity don’t mix!