Sine Wave Inverter Anomaly

brulaz wrote:

SoundGuy wrote:

...
So ... in my case bonding isn't necessary after all with either the genset OR the inverter, everything works just fine without any additional bonding. With a Progressive EMS it may be a different story ... I guess it depends on how it's wired but at least now I have my own answer. Thanks to all who replied! :B

Good news.

Hopefully I'll find out about the Progressive EMS later this week ... assuming I can get through the clouds of black flies around the trailer.

And if it does not work, I may just get up my courage and try Roy's plug in the second socket. But no, will probably just wait for that relay to arrive and the black flies to go away. ;)

Many cheapo inverters CAN NOT be "bonded", period. Instead they use a "floating ground", in other words the wire you expect to be a "neutral" is actually 60V AC ABOVE "ground" and the "hot" is also 60V above ground.. Bonding the neutral to equipment ground with is supposed to be your frame in a RV results in shorting half the 120V to the battery 12V ground.. Bad things happen when that is done.

Better inverters are capable of having the neutral bonded to the equipment ground (which in a RV is the frame and battery ground)..

For those you you can simply wire up a male plug with a jumper from the neutral to the equipment ground and plug that into a open outlet on the inverter.

This is the same "fix" for some inverter gens like Honda which do not have a neutral to equipment ground bond..

This fix will allow the EMS to "see" a bond and allow normal operation. Some EMS systems also have a "bypass" mode which bypasses the EMS function, however you do lose the "protection" of the EMS during that bypass..

But BEFORE adding any neutral to equipment bond you MUST READ THE MANUAL OF THE INVERTER OR GENERATOR to make sure you CAN make that connection.