Wiring Diagram

Hi folks,

I created this simplified electrical diagram (in the attachment) to try to remember the battery, solar, chargers, etc., connections on my 2015 SS Agile. Do I have it right? Any comments? I wasn't explicit about the AC path through the Charger/Inverter because I haven't researched it.

Excellent diagram JR. After a month owning our 2015 TS ETrek we finally "self taught" ourselves the various methods to keep the batteries charged. I want to ask you a question. The cooling fan on our particular inverter (5000W SineWave Inverter & Charger) has no power saving switch or feature that I am aware of, and the fan runs continuously night and day even when the battery is fully charged, no load on the system, and fairly cool weather with the door open (60 degrees). The reps at RT sent me a manual, but it still doesn't address this issue, or the supposed power saving feature. Before I take it back for a possible warranty problem I would like to know if anyone else out there has the same problem?

Fr8rcapt said:

Excellent diagram JR. After a month owning our 2015 TS ETrek we finally "self taught" ourselves the various methods to keep the batteries charged. I want to ask you a question. The cooling fan on our particular inverter (5000W SineWave Inverter & Charger) has no power saving switch or feature that I am aware of, and the fan runs continuously night and day even when the battery is fully charged, no load on the system, and fairly cool weather with the door open (60 degrees). The reps at RT sent me a manual, but it still doesn't address this issue, or the supposed power saving feature. Before I take it back for a possible warranty problem I would like to know if anyone else out there has the same problem?

Click to expand...

Fr8capt -- sorry for the late reply. I would say no, this is not correct or reasonable behavior. Any reasonable design should run the fans as needed, not all the time. If nothing else, it's a noise annoyance factor, plus a small drain on the batteries.

Fr8: as I've noted before, this behavior of the inverter fan is the norm in the ETreks. When the issue first came up, several of us were in discussion with RT, and the upshot was that the "powersave" function, which in fact would shut down the inverter when no load was being run (as our manuals stated at the time), was incompatible with the ETrek wiring setup.

Initially the blame was on the microwave, supposedly that when the clock came on, that bit of current caused the inverter to sense a load and it woke the inverter up -- over and over. That turned out to be rubbish, proven by simply unplugging the microwave: powersave still doesn't work.

So RT in their wisdom tells us "don't use the powersave, we wish we hadn't installed it", and eliminated it in later rigs such as yours.

My solution is that I only turn on the inverter when I anticipate I'll need 110. At bedtime it goes off. Call it "manual powersave". Fortunately we hardly ever watch the TV, as that fan would be annoying.

JRForster said:

Any reasonable design should run the fans as needed, not all the time. If nothing else, it's a noise annoyance factor, plus a small drain on the batteries.

Click to expand...

My Sprinter conversion had a 255 amp-hr battery and a 1000 watt Magnum inverter. If I left the inverter on overnight without any power draw from conversion, the battery would drop the state of charge down from 100% to 93%. That was without the inverter fan running. I quickly learned to only turn on the inverter when I wanted 120 volt power and then turn it off when not needed.

The "search" function was tried initially but at night the noise it made looking for a load was distracting so that was never used again.

I found a cheap ($50) 600 watt microwave that would run on the 1000 watt inverter. It did not have pushbuttons or a clock. Just two simple mechanical dials. No power draw when not in use.

Our old rig had a Xantrex inverter/charger that (a) insisted on running its fan whether it was hot or not; and (b) required navigating a complex menu in order to turn the inverter on/off. Our Legend has an Outback unit that (a) only runs the fan when it needs it (which is rarely); and (b) has dry-contact terminals permitting one to connect a physical switch to directly turn the inverter on/off. I used this feature to add a very convenient toggle switch boldly labeled "INVERTER". Vast usability improvement. Being able to just flip the inverter on or off as needed was key to solving the whole issue for us.

obgraham said:

Fr8: as I've noted before, this behavior of the inverter fan is the norm in the ETreks. When the issue first came up, several of us were in discussion with RT, and the upshot was that the "powersave" function, which in fact would shut down the inverter when no load was being run (as our manuals stated at the time), was incompatible with the ETrek wiring setup.
...

So RT in their wisdom tells us "don't use the powersave, we wish we hadn't installed it", and eliminated it in later rigs such as yours.

My solution is that I only turn on the inverter when I anticipate I'll need 110. At bedtime it goes off. Call it "manual powersave". Fortunately we hardly ever watch the TV, as that fan would be annoying.

Click to expand...

OBGraham: I totally defer to actual information rather than my speculation Thanks for the info. I don't have the eTrek, but I do manually control my inverter the same way. I found the microwave keeps turning the inverter on and off, and beeping as it comes on, only to drop the power draw below the inverter cut-off point, and repeating until I was annoyed.