I have a skoolie with 300ah of agm batteries and a Multiplus II 12/3000 2x120v. I have a Houghton 15000 btu rv air conditioner on the roof. I wired the air conditioner unit to the ac out #2 because I know I will never run my ac unit off the batteries. Everything works great when I’m plugged into my garage receptacle at my house. I’m having problems though, when use my Honda eu2200i generator. I suspect, at my altitude (at least 5500’ at my house, if not higher when I camp), I am pulling just a little too much power from the generator but want to confirm this with all of you knowledgeable people here! When I set my MP to pull 18A, after a couple minutes, ac unit shuts off and the lights on the MP go from having the “charger” and “float” lights on, to only the “inverter” light on. I read that means there was an interruption in the ac power source. After 2 minutes exactly, the charger and float lights come back on and the inverter light goes out. Then the air conditioner comes back on for a couple minutes and it does it all over again. Does it sound like I’m simply overloading my generator?
Any of you who are familiar with that generator, I have another question. The red overload light never comes on when the MP is having these issues and the victron connect app doesn’t show that the generator isn’t providing power. AI seems to think with my altitude, the generator is reaching a mechanical limit and can’t provide the current I’m ask from it. It said if I reach an electrical limit (over 18A), it would turn the red light on, but that’s not what’s happening. Does that sound correct?
I know there’s a couple questions in there. I have more concerning power assist but I’ll save those for later! If anyone has any information on any, or all aspects of this problem, please let me know. I would be so grateful!
Sounds like the A/C compressor kicks in and trips the 18A limit you have set. Our A/C units delay the compressor start for 2 minutes during initial power on, fan still runs. That might be what you’re seeing.
Do you have Power Assist enabled? It appears that is only available on out1
From the manual:
AC-out-2 (Maximum Torque: 2 Nm) A second output is available that disconnects its load in the event of battery operation. On these terminals, equipment is connected that may only operate if AC voltage is available on AC-in-1, e.g. an electric boiler or an air conditioner. The load on AC-out-2 is disconnected immediately when the inverter/charger switches to battery operation. After AC power becomes available on AC-in-1, the load on AC-out-2 will be reconnected with a delay of approximately 2 minutes. This to allow a genset to stabilise.
I know what you’re talking about with the ac fan starting up before the compressor kicks in. Mine does that too. Initially, the compressor kicking in caused the generator to labor a bit, and even trip the resettable fuse on the generator at even higher altitudes above where I live. Because of that, I installed a soft start in the ac unit. Now it starts nice and gently. That being said, I can hear when the compressor kicks in and it’ll run a few minutes before I start having my problems.
I do have power assist turned on. As far as AC 2 out shutting off when batteries are put into the inverter operation. I think what it means is that it’ll shut off AC 2 if the battery is the ONLY power source for the inverter. The reason I say this is because if I set the MP to receive only 15 amps for shore power and I use the air conditioner, it will go into power assist mode and not shut off my air conditioner while still utilizing 15 amps of power from my generator. As an aside, I also don’t understand why when it kicks into power assist mode, it drains my battery way faster than it seems it should need to just make up the short-coming from shore power (my generator in this case). I attached two screenshots. The one that says absorption charge was taken right before it switched over to assist mode, as shown in the other pic. Why it goes from having just barely enough power to run the ac and charge the battery at 1 amp to switching to assist mode and draining the battery at 39 amps, I have no idea.
