Low Shore Voltage
Last week we ran into an issue where the campground shore power for our site was only coming in at 104 volts(30 amps). We have a Progressive surge protector and it would not let the power flow. Report...
Forum Discussion
RV owners need to be responsible users of a some what limited resource. My main use comes when the RV park is nearly empty, so I'm not a burden to other RV'ers. In the summer time, the campground prefers to keep me off their 50 amp pedestals--to make room for 50 amp RV's. That was a problem for me as their 30 amp wiring is old, tired and overloaded. I thought I had it solved with the load support Magnum inverter/charger--and although I found a way to change load support into voltage support, it required careful monitoring on my part, and contributed to early failure of the Magnum (it caught on fire internally, because the cooling fans are 120 volts instead of 12 volts, so when you turn off the inverter--you turn off the cooling).
Now that I have the autoformer I can relax a bit more. I still attempt to "dance on the needles" to tweak things for best performance. Sometimes it is successful and other times I have to do some load shedding even with the autoformer in the circuit.
When I'm "home" I'll turn on the load support before I cook a meal, then turn it off. I don't leave the RV and leave the load support feature on, as there is a chance that low voltage combined with the autoformer may trip the old tired breakers at the RV park, even when I limit my demand to 24 amps. I'd rather not return to deeply discharged batteries from running the roof air.
I don't have a "handle" on the math for what the autoformer does--and how much overhead it adds just by being in the circuit.
I do know that when I was at the 97 volt (under load) 15 amp shore power that my Kill-a-Watt meter was "chirping" and displaying 1800 watts when I was running the roof air (interior voltage 107).
shore power-->kill-a-watt-->autoformer-->RV
That would have been at 20% voltage boost. I did not think to check the amps which may have been a better measurement to use. It did eventually (30 to 40 minutes) cause the shore power breaker to trip.
Now that I have the autoformer I can relax a bit more. I still attempt to "dance on the needles" to tweak things for best performance. Sometimes it is successful and other times I have to do some load shedding even with the autoformer in the circuit.
When I'm "home" I'll turn on the load support before I cook a meal, then turn it off. I don't leave the RV and leave the load support feature on, as there is a chance that low voltage combined with the autoformer may trip the old tired breakers at the RV park, even when I limit my demand to 24 amps. I'd rather not return to deeply discharged batteries from running the roof air.
I don't have a "handle" on the math for what the autoformer does--and how much overhead it adds just by being in the circuit.
I do know that when I was at the 97 volt (under load) 15 amp shore power that my Kill-a-Watt meter was "chirping" and displaying 1800 watts when I was running the roof air (interior voltage 107).
shore power-->kill-a-watt-->autoformer-->RV
That would have been at 20% voltage boost. I did not think to check the amps which may have been a better measurement to use. It did eventually (30 to 40 minutes) cause the shore power breaker to trip.
