Did you flip all the breakers to off then on outside then inside? Check with electric appliance at source?

Sounds like a GFI to me as well

First, what type of an inverter do you have. That will help us to get information.

You need to differentiate between the 12 v side (like your lights, water pump) and 120 v side, (residential refrigerator, microwave, the air conditioning, and some lights). In addition your 120 v side has 2 splits, those who run off the inverter and those that don't. Sounds like the frig and microwave run off the inverter (also probably the TV and some lights). You should have a a breaker on your panel that is 30 amp and it controls the power to a sub panel where you will find the breakers for the microwave, TV, residential refrigerator, etc. If the breakers on your panel aren't label, now is as good a time as any to slowly to go through and see what each one controls.

Sounds like it got hot around the inverter and it went into fault mode. We learned that could happen in very hot weather if we didn't get a fan running in the bed room when we first plugged in if the heat was about 100 or more. Shutting down for a few minutes, letting things cool off, usually does the trick. After switching on again, it defaults to charging the battery bank back up. Not sure what you mean by no lights on the panel.

Our panel default is set with the inverter in charging mode and unless we need the inverter for some reason, it is never turned on.

Barb

EggerMar wrote:

---

OK...we took a trip back out to the RV and while looking for the GFI plugs I noticed a red light on what I believe is the inverter panel. Power Light was off. Charge light was off. Inverter light was off. Fault light was on and red. Error message on screen says High Volts AC DC 12.3v - 7A

Looked up trouble shooting in the inverter manual. Said to unplug outside electrical connection for 15 min. and then plug back in. Sure enough the microwave and fridge are now back up and running.

Now the panel reads Absorb Charging DC 14.0v + 32A No lights are currently lite on the panel.

Not sure what it all means but I assume that's a good thing. If I knew how to upload pictures I would show you the panel.

When am I supposed to turn on the inverter manually as there is a button for that option. There is also a button ON/OFF for charger. When would I have this one on?

Here's a list of all the buttons:

Charger - has an on/off option
Inverter - has an on/off option
Shore
AGS
Meter
Setup
Tech

This is like a foreign language to me....lol...guess I will eventually learn it all.... Thanks to all for your continued support.

Marilyn & Gene

-- Edited by EggerMar on Sunday 13th of July 2014 05:35:00 PM

---

Well, this sounds like to me like you have a Magnum Inverter with the ME RC-50 remote control panel. That's the one we have and we have the same buttons and options.

Charger should be on all the time. You can shut it off manually but I can't think of a reason to do so.

Inverter on/off is to turn the inverter into standby mode. You need this when not hooked up to shore power if you want to run any 110V appliances (only run those your battery bank and the inverter can support). When drycamping, we mostly turn the inverter only on when we want to run some 110V and turn it off again after that, because the inverter standby consumes about 2-3 amps.

The other buttons are 'shore' (don't remember right now what it was, never used it), 'AGS', that is automatic generator start, so only relevant, if you have a generator wired to the charger/inverter, 'Meter', that is to read all possible numbers the remote provides, 'Setup', that is where you can 'program' your inverter to the specs of your battery bank, i.e. max amps, duration of charge stages, voltage while charging in those different stages, 'Tech', don't remember, I think it was for some special functions I never used.

You should have a small manual for the remote control, which is easy to read and follow, where all these buttons, especially the 'Setup' is explained in detail.

By the way, your panel reading of 14.0V in the absorb charging stage may or may not be the right voltage for your batteries to be charged properly. Check the specs of your battery manufacturer and adjust the charge voltage accordingly (using the 'Setup' options on the remote control).

If you don't have a manual for that remote control and it is a Magnum RC-50 I can help you navigate through the remote menu.

Bernd

The "Shore" setting is how many 120 volt amps the inverter/charger should reserve for itself. Unless your inverter/charger is wired into everything, air conditioners included, this is not the same as how many amps you are plugged in to. I set it to 15 amps when we were on 30 amp service, since the air conditioner needs the other 15 amps. If you somehow have a battery drain, maybe from a power outage, the Magnum charger will pop the shore power breaker if the Shore setting is too high. It is really critical when hooked up to a house 15 amp circuit, I normally set it to 10 in those situations but have set it to 5 when I learned the 15 amp circuit was shared. If you have a hybrid Magnum inverter, this is a very important setting, it controls when the inverter load support kicks in. We have a hybrid. It allows us to run the microwave or other high amp appliances while hooked to 15 amp.

We do turn off the charger when on metered electric and have good solar charging from our solar panels. It won't save that much electricity, it might buy me lunch once a month, but it makes me feel better that my solar charging system is doing something.

With a residential fridge you will most likely leave the inverter on all the time. I would not turn it off without testing with remote thermometers in both the freezer and refrigerator sections. You can't go from others experience here, since some can go 8 hours without power, while others can only go 3 hours.

If you want power to the fridge when not on shore power, the inverter has to be on. It has an internal transfer switch and will switch to inverting when the power goes away, like when you unplug the shore power.

As I said above, "With a residential fridge you will most likely leave the inverter on all the time". Without electric power, the fridge will warm up internally and all your food will spoil. When the motorhome engine is running the batteries are being charged by your engine alternator.