Maximizing output of a 30 amp pedestal

[dmd5]

Originally Posted by Chazman

Do you have an EMS? If not I would highly recommend one. I like (and have used four of) the Progressive Industries units over the years, but Hughes units are also highly recommended. There are others out there too. In case you don't know, a good EMS can protect your electronics/appliances from high and low voltages.

We have a Hughes, it has saved us several times in state campgrounds with bad voltage sag delivered to the park others were disconnecting power. We had full voltage for our devices to run efficiently.

[NXR]

As others said, switch the water heater to propane only. When the electric heating element is warming the water it is using over 1/3rd of the capacity of a 30-amp pedestal. Switch the fridge to propane as well.

Due to the names given by the electrical industry it is not clear to people that a 30-amp pedestal can deliver up to 3,600 watts but a 50-amp pedestal can deliver up to 12,000 watts of power.

Why? Because a 50-amp pedestal has two 50-amp circuits while a 30-amp pedestal only has one 30-amp circuit.

Ray

[Youppi99]

Could also be the right time for you to invest in Soft start on your ac’s!!

[TheMarkles]

Originally Posted by Youppi99

Could also be the right time for you to invest in Soft start on your ac’s!!

It sounds like I had brownout, my bad for not realizing it, just lucky I didn't toast a circuit board somewhere. Not really sold on the softstart yet, especially since prices range from $80 - $400, seems a bit of a wide spread for basically a capacitor. I'll check the forums, maybe someone here has done a review on a few of them.

[NXR]

Originally Posted by TheMarkles

It sounds like I had brownout, my bad for not realizing it, just lucky I didn't toast a circuit board somewhere. Not really sold on the softstart yet, especially since prices range from $80 - $400, seems a bit of a wide spread for basically a capacitor. I'll check the forums, maybe someone here has done a review on a few of them.

A soft start is not a capacitor. That's called a "hard start". A hard start capacitor stores extra energy that is released into the compressor to give it an extra "kick in the pants". They are intended to help give aging compressors an extra boost to get them running faster if they cannot get going.

A soft start is exactly the opposite. It electronically controls the amount of power going to the compressor to kind of ease it up to speed. The peak power requirement of the compressor is a lot lower.

Our A/C's have an LRA, locked rotor amps, of 62 amps. I've seen some RV air conditioners that have an LRA spec as high as 82 amps. After I installed the Micro-Air EasyStarts on ours the peak current they pull at startup is about 15 amps.

Neither helps after the compressor gets up to speed. If you have a low voltage situation you're still going to have a low voltage situation.

There are people who will claim they are both as effective as the other but if you think about it, the hard start method is a lot harder on the compressor. That translates to a lower life. Not instantly lower but lower. A hard start was designed to give an aging compressor a bit more life. It was already dying anyway so deferring the replacement a bit can be a good thing. Kind of like loading Grandpa up with drugs to get him going a bit longer.

Ray

[vlamgat]

Originally Posted by TacomaJoe

Everybody knows that a GFCI will trip if the current in the hot and neutral don't equal each other. The assumption being that any imbalance current would be going through you.

Part two of the GFCI equation is neutral to ground impedance. If you plug a pigtail in the outlet and touch the neutral and ground together it will trip. No hot wire or any load needed.

These Y cables fail two ways. No RV connection yet. First, when you plug the 30A and 15A in, the wiring ties the two neutrals together and the two grounds together. The neutral of the 15A GFCI follows the 30A neutral to the pedestal where it is bonded to the ground (as it should be in a service). Then follows the 30A ground back to the GFCI ground and you have the impedance issue. This will trip even if the 30A breaker is OFF.

Connect the RV. Current flows from 15A GFCI hot to RV, powers the microwave and comes back on the neutral. The trouble happens at the Y because you have two paths for the neutral current to take back to the panel buss. The splitting of the neutral current will cause the imbalance and trip the GFCI.

So - is this why the Y adaptor does work when the 20 amp leg is plugged into an outlet from another breaker board? I have used this successfully with the 30 amp leg plugged into the remote garage 30 amp outlet and a 100 foot cable to a 20 amp outlet on the exterior wall of the house?