I have an 400 watt inverter installed.
I have 4 golf cart batteries.
I have an external 3 stage battery charger that I use to charge my golf cart batteries when dry camping.
I have separated the living room receptacles with a toggle switch
I want to just temporarily disable the charging part of the unit.
I have a generator that will not start up the air conditioner if the battery bank is low. I have to get a full or almost full charge on the batteries before I can start the roof air. I dry camp in the desert and the wifey watches tv a lot.
99 Ford 7.3 SC SD with ATV rack on top
2003 Cougar 245EFS
mods-4 golf cart batteries, 1750 watt inverter with toggle switch installed for living room outlets
Have you tried charging with the converter and charger at the same time? The charger circuit is only 6 or 12 amps DC, so should not take a lot of AC power - about 150 watts or less. And it might help your charger charge a little faster.
But, turning off the breaker should do what you want unless it turns off some receptacle that you want to use while on gen. Does the reefer automatically switch to AC when you run the gen? If so, it could be adding the load for the heating element. If it is on the same breaker as the converter, turning off the converter breaker would be a double help for the gen load.
FWIW, the charger in the 6300 has two "stages". First, it charges the battery, and then when the battery is fully charged, it switches to a maintenance voltage that is adjustable. The factory set most at 13.8 volts, and in hot weather, that will cause high water usage in the battery. It can be set for a lower voltage, such as the 13.2 volts that is used by PD and WFCO in current production converters, and it will do a good job of maintaining the batteries fully charged.
When I plug in the converter with low battery's and try to run the roof air it kicks off my generator. If the batteries are charged and the converter/charger is not working then the roof air will start fine.
With no load but the charger circuit, the 6300 converter should be drawing less than 2 amps. But that may be enough to overload your gen when added to the A/C if your gen does not have the capacity to run both loads.
Most 6300 converters are hard wired to a breaker, has someone put a cord on yours so you plug it into a receptacle?
Or are you turning on the breaker? If so, you may also be powering other loads in the RV, such as the reefer; and the reefer may be switching to AC and the heating element adding to the load.
If turning off the converter breaker does what you need and doesn't impact other circuits, that is the simple way to eliminate it as a load on the gen.
I just put a switch into mine to turn of the converter, however that also turns off 12 volt lights if hooked up to A/C and disconnected from the battery. But I have a battery charger to keep the batteries charged and does a better job.
2005 Dodge 2500 SWB 5.9 cummins
2002 Keystone Cougar 276EFS
Pullrite sliding hitch
One wife and kid
My converter is not on a separate circuit, so I couldn't turn only it off with a breaker. To keep the converter from running when the coach is in storage, I installed a switch to turn it off, and "T'd" in cables to connect up a trickle charger. The converter is located under the refrigerator, and you can see the install by following this link Charger.
Will & Di
2004 Southwind 32VS
Workhorse/8.1
Jeep Wrangler/Blue Ox "We have met the enemy, and he is us" Pogo
My rv is in storage, I will check out the circuit breaker idea.
I bought the rv new, so mine should still be hardwired to circuit breaker
Reefer is on gas when boondocking.
Then only time I have a problem is when the batteries are low, on board charger is running full, so when I try to start up air conditioner it kicks fuse off on generator.
When charging I usually have onboard charger and portable 3 stage charger going at same time but roof air set to off if doing it this way.
If breaker idea is not feasible then how is the switch installed? If possible.
If breaker idea is not feasible then how is the switch installed? If possible.
---------------------
AFAIK the 6300 is similar to the 7300 for this part.
On our 7300, the converter is underneath the AC dist panel and it has two wires coming up from down there, a black (hot) and a white (neutral) there is no ground.
The white goes off to a "neutral bus" -leave that alone, the switch goes in the black wire before it reaches the circuit breaker the black wire goes to. (Parallax tech told me not to put the switch in the white wire, use the black)
On ours, the black wire went to the same breaker as the AC recepticals (including the fridge AC plug's socket outside) and Ac lights circuit. I chose to snip that converter black wire from the AC receptical circuit's black wire where they were spliced together near the breaker, and splice it in with another circuit's breaker (I chose the galley receptical's breaker which has it's own little circuit being a GFCI)
This means when I use the galley receptical's breaker as my switch, the converter is shut off too, and I can still use the other AC repepticals (good for when on inverter)
I don't do this very often so using the breaker as a switch is ok, but you might want to switch the converter off more often for that application, so putting a real switch in the converter's black wire would be preferable.
With the converter off all the "12v" will be on the low battery bank, so with the gen on you will want to put your portable charger on it. But then your AC can't start. So now you need a drill.
-switch off converter
-on gen
-on Air conditioner--once running ok, then
-on battery charger and put converter back on to help with the charging, BUT
- I expect when the air conditioner cycles, you have to be there ahead of time to switch off the converter and battery charger again. You need a crystal ball to tell you ahead of time when the air conditioner will cycle.
Offline
