Power to Fridge in Motion

[wecker1]

Just returned from 3.5 months in the NY mountains and am pleased to say that the Monty performed as designed without any issues. With that said, I had an issue powering the Residential Fridge for the two days of travel home. Fortunately, the internal temp remained cold enough that our frozen goods were still frozen and salvageable. I had the power chord from truck to RV connected, the two battery disconnect switches open to allow power flow, and, the inverter turned on, but yet no power to the fridge, none. I also checked the breakers and none were tripped. Can someone tell me what I did wrong? I also tried various combinations of the battery disconnect switches being on and off out of desperation but still nothing? Also, hooked up to 50 amp service when we got home and the fridge works fine on 50amp.


Your assistance is greatly appreciated.

[AZ Traveler]

Wayne,

Did your inverter have power or was it just turned on? With a voltmeter you can check for 12 volts coming in and 120 going out.

[wecker1]

The inverter had power and the digital readout was flashing showing the battery at 13.1

[GreG L.]

I had a similar issue when checking out how things worked on the one we just bought. I turned the inverter on and everything came up but no power to the refrigerator. I chased and checked things for a while them pulled out a 120V outlet tester and no 120V out of the inverter, I cycled it a couple of times and it came up. Velcro-ed the the tester to the inverter so I can check it each time now that I don't trust it..

[wecker1]

After further research I've found that the inverter has power to it but no AC power output. The puzzling thing is that the status indicator light is green which indicates the inverter is operating "normally", but yet the digital display which should alternately show, measured battery voltage, total AC output power, and/or error code, only flashes the battery input which is now at 12.7V. According to the Magnum Dimensions Owners Manual, Troubleshooting Guide, a condition of "No AC output with a green status indicator light", indicates that the GFCI was tripped. The GFCI on the invertor itself doesn't appear to be working as when you press the test button nothing happens, no clicking or mechanical change. I've checked the GFI in the RV, can only find one in the bathroom, and same thing, can't be tested or reset. Lastly, the wall outlets in the RV have no power...? At this point I'm "assuming" that the invertor is bad and needs to be replaced. Would appreciate any comments or recommended further steps to take before opening my wallet to replace this invertor which is less than two years old.


To recap, everything runs fine on shore-power and the above is only experienced when running on battery power.

The invertor is the original Magnum Dimensions CSW1012 installed by Keystone.

Thanks

[jcurtis934]

Gfi is tripped, pressing test will have no effect because test button is equal to manual trip, 1000 watt inverter should be just powering fridge, regular gfi's in rv are not in circuit with the inverter. Turn off inverter, push the reset button on the inverter. It should go in. Turn on inverter and should have ac out.

[wecker1]

Jcurtis - have done that and no change. Spoke with Magnum/Dimensions and tried what they called a hard restart, i.e. complete power disconnect, no change in status. MD said if that failed the unit needs to be replaced.

[jcurtis934]

Bummer wayne. Good luck on the new unit. Hope all goes smooth.

[LBlack]

We have a 2018 381th with the same inverter from Magnum/Dimensions with exactly the same issue being described. What I found after wasting the time to try everything discussed in all of the posts so far is the GFI on the inverter itself was faulty. No matter what I did or tried it would not reset. This entire system was used twice before failure.

I found a couple of websites that discussed the problem extensively and the consensus appeared to be an engineering default using this particular GFI switch configuration and an inductive load (residential fridge). If your like us and going to layout money for another device, it would be worth the time and trouble to investigate the manufactures and to make certain the GFI is designed to handle an inductive load.

Magnum/Dimensions has always been an upstanding company. Not only in the RV world but in other industries as well. That said the Magnum/Dimensions website does not list the CSW1012 in the RV Application guide. The company does list the 2000 watt model of the inverter and we have decided to go that way.

[wecker1]

LBlack - my research found the same so I just upgraded to the CSW 2012 as well. Thanks to all for comments and suggestions.

[jcurtis934]

Not all fridge loads are inductive. The samsung uses an inverter compressor not the typical motor driven compressor. If your fridge was one that did use the normal compressor, I would imagine that the startup surge could be twice what the maximum load is. But most inverters have a startup surge spec that is roughly twice it's rated steady state...ie, a 1000w inverter is probably 900 watts. So it pays to know what the fridge specs are. If keystone put in an inverter that doesn't have enough power to drive the fridge, then crap happens. Can't say what keystone is installing for fridges and inverters.

[LBlack]

icurtis934, you are exactly correct in your response. I have a SAMSUNG fridge and as already stated the inverter installed in the trailer should have handled the load. even during startup. Unfortunately the GFI connection used on the CSW1012 will trip on surge currents not even close to the rating of the device. In some cases it will trip and not be resettable. Since the device is not serviceable then when it is not resettable, you have a paper weight. ( Expensive paper weight!!!). Unfortunately for a good many of us, we were unlucky enough to have one of these faulty units and are stuck with trying to figure out the best way to spend our money..

To me, and this is ONLY my opinion, I have trouble spending money on the same product when there are numerous occurrences of the same fault condition.

[jetskier]

I have a RV refer. However, I had issues with the GFI tripping almost everytime the inverter was switched on. I took the end cap off the inverter and removed the GFI and installed a regular outlet. GFIs have no place when it comes to refrigerators. It took about 10-15 minutes to do the job. Just make sure you cut-off the DC power.