Thor Forums

[dkoldman]

Originally Posted by Chance

If I understand your plan correctly, that will work but only as a short-term temporary fix unless you have lots of solar to charge batteries. Otherwise batteries will go dead, or the battery charger (converter) will end up using more power than you saved.

Ah a thinking man I see... I like these virtual problems as they are lot more fun than having to experience them when you are on the road

Okay let me start by saying I have no solar. I think it is great, but I have never seen the financial benefit. If I ever wanted solar, I think I would want a lot more than 1000watt and build it ground up.

As far as your scenario goes, in my case; when I have any shore power (15-20amps or more) the battery charger is on; so while inverter is on (remote button in RV), the batteries are being replenished. I have yet to see the output from Inverter be such that it had negative drain on house batteries when charger was on? It certainly does not have negative impact when running off the engine alternator; which I do all the time on every trip.

Next trip, I will have to look to see if my House batteries voltage is dropping when Inverter is on & shore power is connected? I think in past, I have always turned off the Inverter when shore power was on; as I did NOT need. But in example above, if I was on 20 amps and really worried about tripping the outside breaker as OP stated, I would turn on the inverter to offset some load off the 20 amp circuit.

But let's make an assumption that it could drain my house batteries a little over time (a day or two); I could get around that by making certain my AGS is on. If my House batteries hit 12.5v (my programmed voltage to start to generator) my generator will start and guess what ... it will ensure power to the charger that it already had from shore So if the Generator can supply sufficient power to charge over the normal drain caused by inverter being on, why wouldn't the same happen for shore power?

The below is bonus...
In my case depending on how I have the Onan AGS configured, with AGS on.... once it hits the 12.5v (my programmed voltage to start to generator) it would trigger to start generator; but since shore power is sensed on pins 13 & 14 at the controller, the Generator will not start. It is user defined setting; so I may turn that off so the generator will start even though shore power is on. It is the latter scenario that I used above in assumption. I just wanted to point out that I can optionally have my generator to NOT start if shore power is detected. I don't believe my coach batteries will drain with normal 1000 watts of load, or less with any shore power.