Generator draws 1.5-2kW of power when Surge Protector is bypassed. Nothing is running that draws that much.

[BillySevel]

Hello All,

      I am trying to test whether my Westinghouse iGen2500 can run the A/C in my Legacy Oliver II (2017).  The Surge Protector throws off the Error of E2 when I am hooked up and running, which means the ground and neutral is disconnected at the generator.  I am awaiting a Bonding plug from Amazon in order to help remedy the situation.  Fingers crossed.

However, In the meantime, I decided to bypass the Surge Protector, and see if the generator could run the A/C anyway.   Before I even turned on the A/C though, the generator surged to 1.5-2kW of power, and nothing (no fan, fridge, lights, etc...) was running.  I figured that power could be hurting something, so I turned it off.  Curious if anybody has had this issue before particularly with generators.  Might have something to do with the neutral ground disconnect, but not sure.   Definitely don't want to damage the converter haha!

[SeaDawg]

Billy, 

BoB has used the same genset to run his Dometic. Here's his post. Do you have the soft start installed on your ac?

We have the same genset, and have used it to charge the batteries, and run some power tools. Tried it with our little Houghton 9500. And it worked fine. Thankfully,  we've not needed ac (yet) in the mountains this summer . Or any summer,  for that matter.

When you were seeing 1500 to 2000, did you still have it in choke, or in run?

We don't have your inverter, so I  have no idea. Actually,  we don't have an inverter at all. We have the progressive dynamics charger/converter, in our older trailer.

 

[Townesw]

Try turning off the battery charger in the power distribution center and see if the generator still pulls that much power. 
 

You can easily make a neutral/ground bonding plug with a plug and a short piece of wire. I’ve made two and both work fine. 

[John E Davies]

If you have a regular hot water heater, make sure that breaker is off, or go outside and manually switch off the electric heating element. if you have that and the fridge and the converter off…… all that is left is the AC. Unless you are also making popcorn. Basically, start with everything switched OFF, once the gennie is running and stabilized, bring things back online one at a time to see what is happening.

The most common problem I have when running off the generator is the fridge, it Auto switches to 110 volts if I forget to turn off that breaker….. I always have the converter turned off, since I typically am charging off solar. 

Good luck.

John Davies

Spokane WA

[BillySevel]

Thank you everybody for your input. It turns out the water heater draws 1200 watts, the battery charger draws about 200 and that would make up about the 1500 watts I was seeing. I guess I was curious to see if the bypass switch was causing the issue because of the ground neutral disconnect at the generator. Going forward I think I just need to make sure the water heater is off and should be able to run the air conditioning with no problem. Everybody have a great day and once again thanks for your input.

[Swamp]

Note: you can tune your Xantrex inverter to only use your gen power for either load or for charging. You can also regulate in those perimeters the amp load limit needed from your gen. IE "3 lithium 130ah batteries" less than 30amps (factory set at 100) down to 15 (50) for your gen. 

Pat