Shore Power and things!

[Anderson3498]

A couple of days a go, I took the RV (2015 Tiffin Allegro Red) on a 75 mile run just to exercise the truck portion of the RV. Prior to removing the shore power the remote would change from floating charge to full charged. (normal operations, so I am thinking). It had been like that for some time. After returning, I parked the RV back and hooked up my shore power, waited 128 seconds of the Surge guard to through its checks then the transfer switch connected, the remote went into a High AC Volt Alarm. I selected the inverter button on the remote and the High AC Volt Alarm went away. I thought at this time I was on shore power but I believe I was wrong. Checked the RV this morning and started the generator and the remote status showed the batteries at bulk charge, seems I was on battery power as I now must take the batteries through Bulk, Absorb, Float and Full Charging. I understand that shore power and generator power go through the transfer box. Everything works with the generator. I have verified voltage into my surge protector from the shore power hook up. After I get the batteries charged, I'll conduct the inverter reset IAW the manual. Seems the more I learn about the RV the less I know. Any advice??

[docj]

The SurgeGuard most likely has the ability to cut off shore power if it detects "high AC voltage". I suspect that's what happened. Since you had the inverter "on" you didn't notice that shore power had been disconnected until you saw that the batteries had been drawn down. My old Surgeguard didn't have a "High Voltage" alarm, it simply cut off power if voltage exceeded something like ~130V.

As for what the source of the problem is, in my experience high AC voltage is often caused by a "floating neutral" either at the outlet box or in the plug, etc. If there is resistance in the line on one leg of the 240V circuit, the other leg will float higher to compensate. In a situation which happened at my location, the high resistance was momentary due to slightly loose connections and this caused the Surgeguard to cut off and then back on.

In your case it sounds as if the problem is more consistent which is why the Surgeguard simply turned the power off. You'll need to investigate using a digital VOM but you'll need to test the voltage under load to figure out where the problem is. The Progressive power management system that I currently uses allows me to remove it from the circuit for testing purposes; my Surgeguard lacked that feature. In this case you'll want to see what the voltage is that's causing the Surgeguard to trip.