Electric problems on my 2003 winnie

[Jim Dazley]

Hope someone has an idea what's going on with my electric, I moved to a new campsite plugged in my progressive industries 50 amp surge protector everything checked out ok went in the coach and the lights and tv worked great a little while later I turned on the Airconditioner and the tv turns off I turned the a.c. off and the tv came back on. Found out the any power draw more than 5 amps shuts off the power till load is turned of... Checked out the surge proctor and got all lights on even the red ones that means open neutral, I unplug from shore power and start the generator an everything works as it should do I turn it off and try shore power again and the exact same thing happens, the shore power has been checked and it's fine it's something in the coach anyone have this problem before, or know what I can check.. Thanks in advance..

 

[John Canfield]

Sounds like an issue with the power pedestal. Something is opening up during a load - power can measure okay with no/light load and fail at rated current.

 

[Gary RV_Wizard]

With that sort of flaky power problem on a 50A hook-up, I strongly suspect an open neutral, or more likely, a poor quality neutral connection. Everything will look ok to the PI monitor until some load comes on one leg. With a bad neutral, any unbalance in the load on the two power legs causes the voltage to rise on one leg and fall on the other. The neutral wire problem could be in the power pedestal or your shore cord. Since the genset works fine, it is somewhere in or between the Auto-transfer switch in the coach and the power pedestal 50A outlet.

If you can try another 50A outlet, that will help isolate between pedestal and shore cord. If not, try using a 50A-->30A adapter and plugging to the 30A outlet instead of 50A. That will put all the power on one leg of the pedestals circuits. Let us know what happens.

 

[Jim Dazley]

I have tried a 30 amp power hookup also and had the same result. If that helps. How do I find an open neutral?

 

[ennored]

Have you checked out the transfer switch? A loose connection there might cause issues like you are seeing.

 

[Gary RV_Wizard]

An actual open neutral is readily detected with a multimeter - no voltage between either hot wire and the neutral. However, a poor quality neutral, e.g. a corroded or loose connection or nearly broken wire, is very hard to detect without lab grade instruments.

Since you have the problem on 30A power, I am leaning toward a damage connection in your shore cord, probably at the power plug end. It gets a lot of wear & tear and a nearly-broken wire is not unusual. Especially on a 14 year-old RV.  I could be wrong about that - the evidence is not conclusive - but its not an expensive fix to try. If your existing plug is original, it will be molded on and needs to be cut off, but if it was replaced at some previous time it can be opened up with a screw driver for inspection. And probably repaired easily as well.

Here is a replacement:
https://www.amazon.com/Camco-55255-PowerGrip-Replacement-Plug/dp/B000PGVZ30

 

[John Canfield]

The conundrum is it worked before he switched sites  .

 

[Gary RV_Wizard]

That suggests the problem is in the site pedestal, but it's still possible that the act of unplugging and replugging the shore cord broke a wire in the shore cord, or pushed a damaged connection a bit too far.

The main clue is that the problem arises as the amp load increases. A weak neutral is by far the most probable cause for that sort of issue. Perhaps not the only one, but the most likely.

 

[nhlineman]

Definitely sounds like a neutral issue either in your cord or the campsite power source.