Trace 2500 series inverter

[Railroader]

Having a little trouble with my inverter and was going to see if anyone could help me out. I have a Trace 2512 inverter/charger with solar system. Hooked up to good 120 volt shore power but when I turn the A/C unit on or the ref. on they will run for about 2 minutes and the inverter kicks off and I loose my all my 120v circuits. No breakers are tripping in my 120v panel nor are there any blown fuses on the DC side. Called the help line for Trace Engineering and they put me through to a so called tech and they couldn't give me anything except to reboot it. I do have 2-12 volt batteries hooked up in parallel and they are only 2 year old. Does anyone think if my batteries were getting weak that it would cause this problem? Thanks

[68 Overlander]

Should be easy to rule out the batteries by having them load checked (at any dealer or auto parts store for free) or if they are flooded wet cells you can do that yourself with a hydrometer but curious who you called since Trace should be Xantrex these days and I never get good support from them either on Trace products after they bought them out.

[Railroader]

Yes, I do need to take the batteries and have them load tested. When I called the Trace Engineering number the lady did say a different name but they took care of inverters and she would have a tech call me back and they did within several hours but I think the tech was more like a sales person. Then they sent me a email and the name on it said Solar Cowboyz out of Grass Valley, Cal. I did get ahold of a guy that used to work on them and he said sounds like when it was installed they ran the shore power to the inverter so it would back up all 120v circuits and that needs to be separated where the A/C, ref. and microwave just run off of shore power and not threw the inverter. So the way he explained it to me was when boon docking the small appliance circuit that should be ran off of the inverter should produce 120v from my batteries. Thanks for your help!

[68 Overlander]

Curious if you ever got an answer on this? Rereading your post, it sounds like your were trying to run your AC unit off that inverter? It may or may not start it depending on the surge rating of that Trace inverter but regardless, I don't think its feasible to expect it to. That would certainly tax your two batteries in short order. It should run a refer however but since I believe that is a modified sine inverter, it will not do any favors to your appliances, especially motors.
I agree you should have, in your case, a sub panel and wire only those circuits to it that you want the inverter to power. Get the AC off that circuit for sure and only run that when connected to shore/generator power.

[Railroader]

Yes, the inverter was wired to take care of the entire trailer including the ac unit. I re-wired it and just have one circuit off the inverter instead of 5. I did find that a wire from my solar panels to where it charges the batteries only had about 3 strands left on it and it was a #10 wire so there's how my batteries went dead when I was not plugged into shore power. I have parked it in the sun and have been monitoring it all week and everything seems to be working great. Thanks for you help!

[68 Overlander]

Thanks for the update. You can still change it to run more than one circuit but I would keep that AC unit off of it for sure. Sounds like you were just overloading the inverter.
You didn't mention any transfer switch and curious if you have one. I presume you do or it has a pass through relay since shore power would likely damage the inverter if not.