So yesterday in a campground store, I found a 50A to 50A dogbone. Not sure what it's design purpose was, but I snagged it and took off the outer cover so I have something I can use to measure power usage in my shoreline cable with my clamp meter. Thank you Mike, for your great ideas!
I agree that measuring the current draw with different devices running can quickly point to the cause of the problem. But there is another way you could figure out what’s going on. Your generators can supply about 26 amps continuously. If you have a good-sized charger for your batteries (100 amps?) and the batteries are a bit down, then the charger may pull 15 amps or so right away, running at full tilt. If an air conditioner then starts, you would likely have an overload, even without anything else on. The Champion 100705 (“2000W”) produces 2000 “starting” watts, and 1600 running watts (13 amps).
Try turning off all the circuit breakers except the charger. Run the generators and start the batteries charging. Next, turn on the air conditioner breaker. When the A/C starts, you might see your issue right there.
If the A/C and charger work fine, turn on the other breakers or devices one at a time until the problem occurs. A fridge or microwave would probably be too much, but most other stuff doesn’t use so much power, so you are fine tuning at that point, and using almost all the power available.
If the A/C starting creates the overload, you could turn off the charger breaker, turn on the A/C breaker, and let the A/C start up – it needs a lot more power to start than to run. Once the A/C is running, then turn on the charger breaker. There’s a decent chance the generators could run those two things if the A/C is started first. You’ll have to repeat this whenever the A/C cycles, but you might be able to run both that way. A fridge could put it over the top; then you have to make some choices about what to run.
So yesterday in a campground store, I found a 50A to 50A dogbone. Not sure what it's design purpose was, but I snagged it and took off the outer cover so I have something I can use to measure power usage in my shoreline cable with my clamp meter. Thank you Mike, for your great ideas!
I find, when it comes to electricity: “One Test is Worth a Thousand Opinions.”
I agree that measuring the current draw with different devices running can quickly point to the cause of the problem. But there is another way you could figure out what’s going on. Your generators can supply about 26 amps continuously. If you have a good-sized charger for your batteries (100 amps?) and the batteries are a bit down, then the charger may pull 15 amps or so right away, running at full tilt. If an air conditioner then starts, you would likely have an overload, even without anything else on. The Champion 100705 (“2000W”) produces 2000 “starting” watts, and 1600 running watts (13 amps).
Try turning off all the circuit breakers except the charger. Run the generators and start the batteries charging. Next, turn on the air conditioner breaker. When the A/C starts, you might see your issue right there.
If the A/C and charger work fine, turn on the other breakers or devices one at a time until the problem occurs. A fridge or microwave would probably be too much, but most other stuff doesn’t use so much power, so you are fine tuning at that point, and using almost all the power available.
If the A/C starting creates the overload, you could turn off the charger breaker, turn on the A/C breaker, and let the A/C start up – it needs a lot more power to start than to run. Once the A/C is running, then turn on the charger breaker. There’s a decent chance the generators could run those two things if the A/C is started first. You’ll have to repeat this whenever the A/C cycles, but you might be able to run both that way. A fridge could put it over the top; then you have to make some choices about what to run.