Inverter/Charger Misconceptions

[Mike GAy]

Mike,

The Heart Interface 2500 inverters have two ways of being wired. They could have 2 AC inputs. If so, there should be 2 input 30A breakers dedicated to each inverter. One will be for charging and the other for pass through. Turning off the circuit breaker for the charger function, turns off the charger. The other wiring method has a single AC input for both charging and pass through. This method supports power sharing. Through the manipulation of remote panel dip switches you can limit charger AC current draw to as little as 5 amps. Here's the documentation (CLICK HERE).

Liberty's circuit breaker panel labeling could have use some more thought. The upper right and left breaker areas are labelled Line 1 and Line 2. These are labeled as expected and are the AC feeds from the generator or shore power. These will also have breakers labeled for the Shore/Generator supply to the inverters. This can be one or 2 per Line, as I described earlier. The lower section of the circuit breaker panel is the part that makes no sense. The left side is labeled Inverter 1 and the right side Line 2. This lower area also has some breakers that have a red center. The red center breakers are the output circuits from the inverters. The best thing you can do is turn off supply breaker in the upper section of the circuit breaker panel for one of the inverters and see which red centered breakers still work. This will tell you which inverter supplies power to which breakers.

I'm not a big fan of the 30A cheater boxes. If the 2 30A feeds are in the same phase then any 240V appliances in your coach won't work. For some, this will be the cooktop and clothes dryer. Also realize 2 in-phase 30A circuits subject you coach's nuetral to up to 60A. Your normal 50A/240V feed will generally have far less than 50A on it's neutral conductor given 180 degree out of phase power cancels one another. This generally should not be a big deal, but I would be concerned with some commercially available transfer switches. BTW, your coach has a Liberty fabricated transfer switch.

Gil: Many thanks for the info. We head out in the AM for a 12-day trip, and I will dig into the documentation and your post while on the trip.

I'm leaving to pick up our coach from Olympia in a bit. It turned out that the new generator cranking battery that Olympia installed had a bad cell cell. They also installed a few parts that had some in for other things, so we should be set.

The complexity of a Prevost means that it takes a while for a newbie to grasp how things work together, but we are getting there. We've owned a houseboat for 20 years, and we are accustomed to having stuff go wrong. There is always something to fix on a boat!

[GoneCrazy]

Gil: Many thanks for the info. We head out in the AM for a 12-day trip, and I will dig into the documentation and your post while on the trip.

I'm leaving to pick up our coach from Olympia in a bit. It turned out that the new generator cranking battery that Olympia installed had a bad cell cell. They also installed a few parts that had some in for other things, so we should be set.

The complexity of a Prevost means that it takes a while for a newbie to grasp how things work together, but we are getting there. We've owned a houseboat for 20 years, and we are accustomed to having stuff go wrong. There is always something to fix on a boat!

You now own a land yacht , gotta love em !