No Power! Inverters? Advice please

OK Poggers, bus sitting at home in my barn, I go out to check on her and find I have no power. No lights. No fridge. No anything. Electrical panel says I have shore power, but I obviously am not converting/inverting it into house power. When I start the bus, all comes on and begins charging and operating as it should. What should I be looking for at diagnosing my problem? As luck would have it, I just spent two days at Prevost a couple of weeks ago. Must be something contagious. I welcome all thoughts.

Tony

Hi Tony. What do your two inverter displays read? If one is off, your inverter may have tripped off. There is a reset switch on each inverter.
My other thought is the shore breaker may not be giving you 240 volt. Also, you have a main breaker
on the port side 1st bay which may be partially off.

Gary, both inverter panels are on. The readings are Line Voltage 001 and load current 00.0 . The reset switches on each inverter were not tripped. The shore breaker in the first bay was in the off position, so I moved it to the on position. I thought that this would solve my problem, but when I checked the inverter panel it is still not showing any indication that the inverters are inverting. Still no power inside the coach without the engine running. All power that we are plugged into looks good and is 50 amp.........I am sure my batteries are taking a beating with this episode.

Any additional thoughts?

Tony,
You might consider unplugging the shore power and starting the generator. Most coaches have a system that monitors shore power and generator power sources for selection. The generator is the default power source, meaning the relay that switches these sources in the unenergized state, would be selecting the generator.. If you start the generator and all powers up, check the relay or driving circuitry that does this selection.

Let me know if this powers up the rig. I am suggesting unplugging simply to assure that the generator does not inadvertently get connected to shore power.

Hector

Hector, I fired up the generator and all works as it is supposed to. I am relatively clueless on where to locate the "relay or driving circuitry" that makes the selection, but will start going through my manuals and try to figure it out.

If any of you Liberty guys can point me in the right direction, it would be greatly appreciated. Thanks to all.

Update. After restarting generator and then plugging coach back in to shore power, everything appears to have reset and is now charging properly. Gary and Hector, I sincerely appreciate your responses. I hope this problem was that simple. I will know for sure in the morning. Thanks.

Tony, recently I inadvertently left my house batteries "on" and severely discharged my house batteries (brand new!). When I realized my problem, hooked up Shore Power but no chargo. My gen was not wanting to start (battery weak?, but different story) Nick Hessler to the rescue. After checking my inverter, etc, started the engine. It was sending a charge to the house batteries ok, but not sufficient to recharge anytime soon. I got the generator started and voila! everything going good. Hooked up Shore power again and shut gen down. Voila again! Inverter charging good, everything ok dokie. Hopefully I did not cause major damage to my new batteries and everything seems ok. Oh, the gen was hard starting, I found my fuel line from Racor to pump had some cracking in the rubber. No leakage of fuel, but thinking I was loosing my prime if not started regularly so a new line is in place. Hope yours goes as well

Tony,

Glad to hear all is well, at least for now. All converters seem to do things differently in regards to generator/shore power selection. I hope these knowledgeable Liberty guys jump in here to assist. I would certainly want to understand the elements of the circuitry for the system in your coach. Something caused it to not function, around my house, this sort of thing always seems to happen again at the most inopportune time.

Glad you got is going again.

Hector

Don't know if this will help in this particular situation but thought I'd pass on my experience.

Our Liberty started to fail to "latch" on occasion when connected to shore power. The problem in my case was a failing solid state relay in the Liberty transfer switch system. there are 2 time-delay relays, one for shore power and one for generator power, located in the transfer switch box in the first bay. Both relays are the same, so I swapped them to see if it corrected my problem and it did..... so I decided to replace both and keep the one old "good" one as an emergency spare.

I have posted the specifics elsewhere in the forum, so you can hopefully find it after a short search.

Hope this helps...

Quote:

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Originally Posted by phorner

Don't know if this will help in this particular situation but thought I'd pass on my experience.

Our Liberty started to fail to "latch" on occasion when connected to shore power. The problem in my case was a failing solid state relay in the Liberty transfer switch system. there are 2 time-delay relays, one for shore power and one for generator power, located in the transfer switch box in the first bay. Both relays are the same, so I swapped them to see if it corrected my problem and it did..... so I decided to replace both and keep the one old "good" one as an emergency spare.

I have posted the specifics elsewhere in the forum, so you can hopefully find it after a short search.

Hope this helps...

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Paul,

Good comment!

Hector

Tony,

On our Marathon, if the battery voltage drops below the invertor cutoff level, the invertors shut down and everything they power shuts down. They will not reset until the battery voltage is brought back up above the cutoff threshold. In this case, one may either run the big motor and alternator or the generator until the battery voltage comes up and the invertors power back up. Then it may be switched to shore power and returned to charging as normal (or stay on generator or alternator).

Wonder if you lost power out there for a long enough period of time for the invertors to pull the voltage down below the threshold, and if so, if the Liberty set up is similar to Marathons?

I also think you need to check your transfer switch. On my Legendary, I had a similar issue where on the road, with engine or generator running, all was fine. Pulled into garage and shut down gen and engine and plugged into shore power. Surge protector came on and went through it's time delay and switched to transfer switch and then nothing. There is a time delay relay in the transfer switch that had failed and was intermittent. There is an override switch on that delay relay so I was able to troubleshoot it fairly easily. Got that taken care of and all has been well since. That is where I would start if all other switches and breakers are good.

My theory on what happened here is that while in for service at Prevost Ft. Worth a couple of weeks ago they either switched the transfer switch to off or otherwise tripped it. In any event it was left in the off position and I didn't know it. This allowed the coach to drain the batteries as it's only source of power. Upon Gary's direction, I then checked and switched the transfer switch back to the on position. I believe that this didn't immediately correct the problem due to a "lazy" or weak relay as described by Paul above. But by firing up the generator, unplugging shore power, then plugging shore power back in, this caused the relay to engage and allow everything to start charging again properly.

Paul, I am going to search that post down and have Liberty send me a couple of relays, but my experience is like Hector's, these problems tend to reoccur at the worst possible time. Thanks for that post.

Gordon, I don't know about a voltage level cutoff for my Liberty, but it started charging right away once the relay engaged.

Just another learning experience..............Man am I glad for POG and for all of you who contribute, including the guys that sent emails directly to me. Thank You.

Tony Your voltage level cutoff is programable through you inverter. Check your owners manual for your inverter. If you don't have a manual for your inverter, state the make you have and someone may be able to help. Rick