Inverter problem

[Nan33]

We need an RV electrical expert! The inverter (Dimensions) on our Itasca is misbehaving. DH thinks the pass-through is not working properly. We are plugged into 50 amp shore power and can't run all appliances, including a small space heater, without tripping the circuit breaker in the inverter. Any ideas?

[Jimalberta]

Try turning off all of your breakers in your panel , reset the inverter and power back up.....the inverter should stay on unless the problem is in the inverter itself. ....and then turn the breakers in the panel back on one at a time to see which one trips the inverter. Once you have the circuit figured out then see what is on that circuit and try to eliminate the loads to find the culprit that is overloading the inverter.

[Dale P]

more info on the inverter.

how many appliances do you have on?

have you done this before?

what size is the circuit breaker

possible the heater is too large

[Kirk W]

Welcome to the forums, Nan! We are sorry to hear that it took problems to bring you here but we will do our best to help. Please do not hesitate to take part in the forums in the future and do return with additional information as it will help us to diagnose what is happening in your RV.

 

I do agree that more information is needed to be sure what is happening, but a good place to start would be knowing if you have used that heater successfully in the exact same manner and situation as you are trying to now. Heaters are a high current demand device and so are one of the more likely devices to trip a circuit breaker. Circuit breakers are there to protect your RV from electrical overloading and it may be doing exactly what it was designed to do, or it could indicate a problem. Circuit breakers do fail but it isn't a very common thing so consider other things first. All circuit breakers have a current rating above which it is supposed to open and to determine if it is working properly you need to add up the current draw of everything it is supplying power to and compare that to the maximum rating of that circuit breaker.

[bobsea43]

Interesting since I see Dimensions is made by the same folks that make Magnum inverters and we just got our RV back after a month+ in the authorized service center for Magnum.

Our remote display presented a "High Voltage - AC" fault intermittently! I got good support from their tech support and the first time we cleared it. However, a few weeks later it reappeared and i took it to the service center but it sefl-cleared during the 132 mi trip.Less then a week later it reappeared. On each occurrence there WAS NO AC power to the coach and the inverter was inverting! When we plugged into power with the fault showing the inverter continued to power the circuits it was connected to - that is it would not go into standby mode! Which sounds similar to your problem now!

 

So as stated above more info is needed. Do you have a remote display panel and are you seeing any faults? On Magnum inverters there is a small light on the inverter that can give some feedback by how it blinks and its colors, Dimensions inverter has a similar "Status LED" that helps in troubleshooting.

 

Page 24 in your owners manual has a matrix on what the Status LED feedback is. Let us know what the LED is telling you. If you don't have an owners manual you can download it www.magnum-dimensions.com/sites/default/files/122197%2024NP%20Manual.pdf

 

Good luck and let us know some more info!!