Inverter/Charger Mystery

[tbro]

Hello All,

I have a Heart Freedom 458 Series, Combi Inverter/Charger in my 93 LY MH.
Today there was a power surge in the warehouse I have it parked in while doing some maintenance and the GFI breaker in the indoor breaker panel tripped off. This happens occasionally so I thought nothing of it at the time, other than it is a slight inconvenience when using the indoor AC outlets. I didn’t have an abnormal load on the AC though I have the fridge connected while parked and a few other items.

I went to the breaker box and reset the breaker and got about ten feet away when it tripped again. I went back and reset it again and it stayed in the deployed position but no power to the AC outlets. I checked the inverter remote panel and it showed AC coming in to the inverter and as far as I could tell, the push button breaker there had not tripped as it cannot be pushed in. I checked the inverter itself and the LED showed AC in and charging. At this point I went and purchased the exact model of breaker (GFI 20A) and replaced the one that had tripped thinking it had probably worn out. Still no power to AC outlets.

I thought perhaps there might be some other problem so I began to troubleshoot the system as best I could to assure the inverter was truly working. I disconnected the shore power and turned the inverter on and sure enough, power to all AC outlets so I assume that the wiring is all good and that the inverter is at least working as it should for that function.

The 12V lights and such all work as they should, and there is no drain on the batteries after several hours of having a few 12V lights on so I assume the charger function on the inverter is working off of the shore power just fine.

So at this point I'm truly baffled as to why I have no AC power to the outlets even though I am plugged into shore power and all the other functions of the inverter/charger seem to be working correctly. All I can think of is the inverter/charger isn’t passing the shore power through. Any ideas?

[mello mike]

I have the older cousin, the Freedom 10.

You might have fried the Freedom's AC relay, but the unit's breaker should have tripped before that happened. Make sure that breaker didn't trip. Try and reset it.

Also, try another AC source. Do you have a generator or another place you can take your coach and plug into? There might be a problem with the source voltage where you're at (low voltage, bad ground, etc). Do you have an AC voltage tester?

[tbro]

I did check the voltage at the outlet I am plugged into and several other outlets that I am not, to verify that wasn't a problem. As for the generator I hadn't ran it for a couple of months and it failed to start yesterday though it seemed to turn over fine. It was getting late so that's todays project.