Trailmanor travels update

[Casey Freswick]

Well here goes. I am 5,000 miles into a 6,500 trip. We made a quick trip boon docking from MI to Seattle. Drove through mountains to just into CA and back to Seattle on 101 the last 2 weeks. No major issues. I have an electric refrigerator that has run great with my 300 watt solar system and a 3,000 watt inverter (the same one as Rick). I am in MT for a couple of days with family. Last night I discovered that my refrigerator was not working. No electric. Checked the inverter, turned it off, turned it on. At that moment not only the inverter 120 continued to not work but the 12 volt system in the TM stopped working. I thought my battery, a 150 AMP Lithium battery was shot or the BMS shut down the system. I shut off inverter and shut off the connection to the 12 volt system with a circuit breaker I had installed. Went to bed. Woke up. Thought I should try charging the batter. But the solar app and battery monitoring app both showed battery at 100%. Turned on 12 volt system. All lights worked. Very low load. Turned on inverter with no load (disconnected everything connected to 120 power drain except for the inverter itself). Battery indicated a quick drain, 12 volt system started turning off and on (with beeps). Shut off inverter. Battery showed 70% charge, then 69% charge and within a couple minutes 100% charge. Turned on a few lights everything on the 12 volt side seems stable. I do not have a major 12 volt drain. Is my inverter messed up? Or is it my battery? That is the question. In order to keep things cold on Monday traveling down the road I NEED 120V. (As indicated, this system had worked perfectly for the last 4 weeks camping and traveling 5,000 miles).

[rickst29]

With that said, the Inverter is probably blown. The question becomes 'why?', and the changes which should be made for future reliability will likely be costly.

The only inexpensive cause for the experiences you described would be loosened wire connections or a partly failed circuit breaker. I have seen a couple of cheap circuit breakers fail with an inability to pass large amounts of current high current, while still showing good voltage across the terminals while "on". Check all battery bus bar connector nuts, and the nuts for the wire into the Inverter bolts. If they are all OK, then it's going to be a costly fix.
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When DC -> AC Inverters fail over a period of time (rather than "immediately"), it is typically a case of DC Voltage starvation or highly reactive AC loads - or both. The 3000/6000 Inverter which we both purchased (https://www.ebay.com/itm/335060051180 works great for non-reactive loads, and I have not yet hurt mine in an obvious ways by also using for a microwave rated at "900 watts" for very limited periods of time.

But your 120-VAC only refrigerator may be far more "unfriendly" (reactive) than my microwave. My air conditioner loads are greatly smoothed out by a complex and expensive "start-up" device, which also overrides the "run" behavior: A MicroAire easy start, IMO superior to the cheaper "Soft Start RV" and similar units (https://www.ebay.com/itm/202724244901).

So even though I run the older Coleman Air Conditioner pretty frequently, my 120-VAC loads are very likely less damaqing than yours.
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You most almost certainly address the DC side as well. Your "150Ah" battery is less than 1/3 the size of my own battery bank, inherently capable of less current from the cells (even with a great BMS and AWG 4/0 wires into the inverter.) The 6000 watt peak rating corresponds to input power approaching 600 amps, and every bit which can not be supplied from the batteries and BMS becomes a destabilizing drain on the capacitors and driving circuits within the Inverter.

Over-stressed to many times, the capacitors probably started to fail - leading to a quick cascade of additional failures. You probably need both a bigger inverter AND another battery to run this fridge. Maybe you should buy a different fridge instead?

[Shane826]

Rick- Care to elaborate on your MicroAir Easy Start preference?

[rickst29]

Originally Posted by Shane826

Rick- Care to elaborate on your MicroAir Easy Start preference?

MicroAire uses multiple sequences of 'Start+Run' for training purposes, while 'Softstart RV' does not. MicroAire proudly proclaims to be USA built. SofStartRV (although a Florida Company) did not mention any USA manufacturing operations.