Question: Truck Battery Bank for Shore Power
Based on some back-and-forth with my original post, I've redefined my problem. 1. Situation: I'm trying to use the battery bank on my truck for shore power for my travel trailer. I want to be able ...
Forum Discussion
Dave in Central NC wrote:I think you have a real safety hazard here. I don't know all the details and it's slightly complicated, so I could be making some wrong assumptions, one of which is that the inverter is in the truck. The result of the cheater plug working says that something goes wrong when the inverter's case is connected to the RV's grounding system.
The cheater plug gets the 2,000w inverter working.
That leads me to three conclusions:
(1) The RV's neutral and ground are bonded, not a good thing.
(2) There's likely a shock hazard if the RV chassis and truck are touched at the same time.
(3) The RV's skin might be "hot".
I'm surprised that such a large inverter would use the hot neutral design described by Tom M. It does reduce manufacturing cost. If the statement in the owner's manual about the internal voltage being 145 is correct, it's likely not the hot neutral design, but there's no assurance that statement is correct. Another possibility is that the inverter is actively detecting a downstream ground-neutral fault as is done with GFCI devices.
Bottom line: The cheater plug result shows that something is wrong with the RV's wiring. Running with the cheater plug might create a serious shock hazard.
