Electrical Power

[Morbach Camping]

Hello,
I have a 2017 Keystone Passport with an electrical issue.
We are camping at a KOA in Michigan near Traverse City and for two straight days when we returned for the day, the AC was off and the fridge was flashing the check light was flashing. We were gone between 6-8 hours each day and the freezer food was still frozen and the fridge was warming. The AC was set at 82.

The KOA folks checked the outlet and it was reading 120V. The power cord plug was warmer than the cord sitting on the ground in the sound all day.

He suggested that I look at my connection of the power cord and to see if any breakers in the camper was hot. The power connection is still the same when we got it back in 2016. The 30A Main and next to it the 20A AC breaker are hot, and the rest feel Ok.

We don't use a surge protector and the days have been hot.

Any thoughts on what might the issue be?
Thanks,
Joe

 

[flybouy]

So you're connected to a 30 Amp shore power and no breakers are tripped but the hvac and fridge are not working, correct? What's the status of the battery? Both the a/c and fridge require 12 vdc to operate the control boards.

 

[LHaven]

Hot but not tripped?
Positional change in a tripped breaker can be subtle -- do a full side-to-side reset to be positive.
An intake filter that is not clean can cause the A/C breaker to run hot and trip, that's easy to check and remedy.
Not sure why the fridge check light, unless your propane was valved off and your battery was low.
Did anything else AC in the rig go dead, like the microwave clock?
Breakers do age out, replacing that 30/20 main duplex could be a good $20 investment. Ace carries them.

 

[Morbach Camping]

So you're connected to a 30 Amp shore power and no breakers are tripped but the hvac and fridge are not working, correct? What's the status of the battery? Both the a/c and fridge require 12 vdc to operate the control boards.

The battery was fully charged. After I cycled the breaker on KOAs box, the AC and fridge started working.

 

[Morbach Camping]

Hot but not tripped?
Positional change in a tripped breaker can be subtle -- do a full side-to-side reset to be positive.
An intake filter that is not clean can cause the A/C breaker to run hot and trip, that's easy to check and remedy.
Not sure why the fridge check light, unless your propane was valved off and your battery was low.
Did anything else AC in the rig go dead, like the microwave clock?
Breakers do age out, replacing that 30/20 main duplex could be a good $20 investment. Ace carries them.

I will do a reset on the breakers and checked the filter. The propane was off, so guessing when the power went out, the fridge tried propane. The microwave clock was off. Thanks for the advice.

 

[LHaven]

So to sum up, the fridge check light was caused by the propane being off (exactly what it should have done), and your AC failure was remedied entirely by cycling the breaker on the campground hook up box?
It sounds like you really don't have any problems in your own rig at all.

 

[flybouy]

So the cg said the pedestal was OK yet the breaker was tripped?

 

[JRTJH]

You said that you do not have any surge protector or EMS ??? If not, the problem may be a "brownout condition" during the hottest part of the day and the low voltage could be putting your shore power connector "at the maximum it can carry" and those copper coated pins on the plug may be "close to melting" which is causing the plug to feel hotter than the cord to the trailer.

If I were you, I'd get an EMS before you have to buy a new air conditioner and possibly a new refrigerator control board and possibly a converter and microwave... Why ??? As the voltage goes down in a brownout, the amperage goes up to keep the watts the same so the appliances will run. What may be happening is the 120 VAC goes down as campground use goes up and may end up being only 105 or 106 VAC to your trailer. Doing the math, 3000 watts at 120 volts is 25 amps. 3000 watts at 105 volts is 28.6 amps. That may not seem like much, but what if the voltage is dropping to say 100 volts? That's 30 amps "on the nose"... That 100 volts can cause your air conditioner compressor to overheat and burn up the windings. (repair cost around $1200). The microwave could also be damaged from the low voltage condition as could the converter in your power center. An EMS (not a surge protector) can prevent that kind of damage from happening by shutting down power to the trailer when an unsafe condition occurs.

I'd suspect if you stay at the trailer and monitor the voltage, you'll probably find that as fellow campers "crank up their air conditioners" the voltage at your site will drop and when the air conditioner compressor attempts to start, it'll draw more amps than the winding can handle and the compressor will overheat, shut down and attempt to restart when it cools down. If it's cycling during a brownout (while you're gone) it may "self destruct" and one evening when you get back to the trailer, it may not restart but will only "blow hot air"...

Get an EMS to protect your trailer's electrical equipment !!!!! You can't fix a brownout condition, but the EMS can automatically disconnect your trailer from the damaging voltage condition until voltage is normal again. That will protect your trailer while you're away. It's cheap insurance against paying for new "comfort appliances" damaged by low voltage at a campground.

 

[sourdough]

Sounds like you had some kind of interruption to your power. You should have an EMS...now. Don't know the campground or their facilities but I can assure you that many I've been in are what I would call "shady"...as in "home grown", thrown together, no idea of code etc. The other thing I would highly recommend it to always have your fridge set with the propane on. If you are leaving for 8 hours at a time I would never leave the fridge without the option of switching in the event of an outage.

 

[jsb5717]

Maybe the pedestal checks out ok...now. But something very likely happened as described above. Yes, you should have an EMS. It's cheap and very practical insurance. Pay $200-$300 now or possibly a few thousand later. Our EMS has saved our coach from high campground voltage. It may be a rare occurrence, but it just takes once.

 

[NH_Bulldog]

We were looking to stay at a campground last summer, but they had a disclaimer on their website that said that due to infrastructure limitations during periods of high electrical demand they were subject to brownouts and to plan accordingly (we have a hardwired EMS, but elected not to risk it). At another place we camped in the Midwest before we bought an EMS, the guy next to us lost power to his camper at the same time we had our plug melt at the pedestal. The staff couldn't get him running again so they had him move to a different site. Given the issue we had, we requested to move as well. That is the event that triggered us getting an EMS.