Residential Refrigerator - Inverter Problems

[DWH]

Not exactly sure where this should be posted. please post in appropriate area.
We have a 2016 LM Charleston. Have had it about 2 weeks. Got it at Wilkins RV in Bath NY. Got good deal and good care so far. Stayed over night at dealer and tried to cover everything in walk through. Missed this. I was shown the two battery cut off switches in the outside front compartment.(red and white in color). When on they reveal a green marker. When turned off they show a red marker. Told to leave both on unless closing up camper for long period. Inside the camper at the control panel there is a small toggle switch that has a green light associated with it. I was told that when I disconnect from shore power I should press that switch and hold it till the little green light came on, that it was okay if it is on when connected to shore power but that it had to be on when disconnected from shore power in order for the refrigerator to run. They showed me that this light came on and therefor I incorrectly assumed that everything was working as it should be. We never tested it disconnected from shore power. Mistake. Left to go home, disconnected from shore power and flipped the switch and got the little green light on. Traveled 3 hrs home and discover refrigerator had not been on. This refrigerator has an external digital screen and neither that nor the inside light were working. Connected to shore power and everything worked fine..

Contacted dealer and got to speak to Mark, the tech person who prepped my unit and did the walk through with us. He told me to see if there is a ground fault breaker on my inverter. There is, and it did need to be reset. But when i reset it and tried to test it, I found that as soon as I would disconnect from shore power the beaker in the ground fault outlet would kick. Also as long as you were disconnected from shore power you could not reset the breaker. you could push it in but it immediately popped back out. As soon as you connect to shore power you could reset this breaker. The toggle switch on inside had green light all the time trough this.

After getting off phone with Mark. I found out a little more. On the wall behind the batteries is where the Magnum inverter is mounter. It is white in color and about 5" wide and 11" high. On the the bottom of this rectangular box is where the ground fault outlet is. It is part of the inverter box. Into one of the 2 outlets, a short wire cord is plugged in. This cord runs to a small square white box (about 5" by 5")that also has the word Magnum on it. If I unplug this cord, the ground fault does not kick when the shore power is disconnected. (Refrigerator does not have power) As soon as I plug this cord back in, if the shore power is disconnected, the breaker immediately kicks and again can not be reset till shore power is connected.

Does anyone have an idea of what problem might be? Any help greatly appreciated. Mark from dealership speculates that inverter might not be large enough to handle my refrigerator. I guess that's possible, but i don't think that's probable. HELP!!

Doug Hoeffner

 

[jbeletti]

Hi Doug,

Sorry to hear about your issue. The black box is a small dedicated transfer switch. The jumper with the 3-prong plug on it that plugs into the receptacle of the inverter is for the Inverter AC input.

There is likely 2 Romex-type cables coming into the transfer switch. One is the shore power AC input from the breaker panel. The other is the AC power output to the AC receptacle behind the refer.

You've done about as much as you can do. Now it's time for someone qualified or comfortable with this to start tearing into it a bit.

If it were mine, I'd turn off shore power and the inverter and open up the transfer switch to verify all the wiring is correct.

Then I'd check the AC receptacle that the refer plugs into. It may be inside the bottom of the cabinet next to the refer.

 

[danemayer]

I agree with Jim. You're describing a ground fault when the transfer switch changes from shore power to the battery/inverter operation. While it could be an inverter problem, perhaps just the GFCI outlet on the inverter, I would think it's more likely that there's an issue somewhere with the wiring.

If you had an undersized inverter for the refrigerator, it would show up as an error code, not a GFCI trip.

Since the shore power side doesn't go through a GFCI circuit, it might tolerate a minor problem that the inverter side would not.

You might check for leaking water under/behind the refrigerator. It's easy to pinch the water feed line when the refrigerator is installed. If water is spraying on the outlet that the fridge plugs into, that could trip the GFCI when on battery/inverter power.

 

[billyjoeraybob]

Any updates on this issue Doug?