How To Get By On 30-Amps Or Less

[sandra@BCM]

BCM’s latest article is about managing your power needs efficiently. The article, "How to Get by on 30-Amps or Less," provides tips on optimizing power usage when faced with situations that offer less than the typical 100-amp electrical supply.

Active-Controls LLC offers a practical solution to the challenges of running a bus or RV on less than 100 amps of electrical power. Active Start, a plug-and-play unit, provides soft start capability to all induction loads, including roof air conditioners and residential refrigerators.

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[Bill Gerrie]

Sandra
Why would anyone require 100 amps for an RV. Not many RV parks (not resorts) offer 100 amps. We even attend rallies that only offer 15 amps and are quite happy with it. We are there to enjoy the fellowship of other campers not to sit in an RV watching TV while the AC keeps it freezing inside. We have been camping in an RV for over 40 years and never required 100 amps. I can't think of any of my friends that have over 50 amp cords and only one cord.

[luvrbus]

A 50 amp RV cord is a 100 amp service it has 2 - 50  amp legs

[dtcerrato]

50 amp service is 50 amps at 240 or 100 amps at 120.

[Gary Hatt - Publisher BCM]

Sandra
Why would anyone require 100 amps for an RV. Not many RV parks (not resorts) offer 100 amps. We even attend rallies that only offer 15 amps and are quite happy with it. We are there to enjoy the fellowship of other campers not to sit in an RV watching TV while the AC keeps it freezing inside. We have been camping in an RV for over 40 years and never required 100 amps. I can't think of any of my friends that have over 50 amp cords and only one cord.

Bill,

Some high-end resorts offer a full 100A service now for large modern all all-electric buses.  But as others have noted, most are labeled as 50A, which is really two 50A legs, a common, and a ground wire for a full 100A load center.

My bus is all electric and it has a 12.5KW generator.  I have an electric stove and a diesel/electric heating system.  I work from my bus on BCM for much of the day, and I like to be comfortable.

Most smaller buses and motorhomes, with one A/C unit, can get by on a 30A service.  If you do not have a large inverter and have propane or diesel heat on board, you can get by with a 20A service, even 15A if you have to.  I have done that with my bus, but I don't get to appreciate all of the amenities in my bus. But I can do it, as long as I don't have to run my roof air units, which can draw up to 18A each on startup.

A soft-start system can muffle the loads so they are more consistent as the article says, and can also make your appliances last longer.

I have boondocked more nights than I have been connected to shore power, and again, if it is not too hot outside, my solar and lithium batteries keep up with the required load quite well, but that is another story.

However the author has a winter place in southern Arizona and when he gets there in the fall, and before he leaves in the spring, he likes to be comfortable when coming home from a hot day outside.

[Gary Hatt - Publisher BCM]

Here is more information from the author, Jerry Work for your reading pleasure...

There is some understandable confusion surrounding the typical RV 50 amp cord’s ability to safely carry 100 amps since it is made up of three 6 AWG wires plus a ground.  Since 6 AWG wire normally can only carry 50 amps safely, the thought is if both legs are carrying 50 amps, the neutral wire must be overloaded carrying 100 amps.  Seems logical, but not correct for 120VAC loads.  The two legs that each can carry 50 amps are 180 degrees out of phase with one another so the shared neutral will carry only the DIFFERENCE in the amperage on each leg, not the SUM of the amperages on each leg, so most of the neutral can ever see is 50 amps, a safe load for a 6 AWG wire.
 

[Jim Blackwood]

To confuse matters even further, When you split off the 110v by going from one leg to ground you take the amperage drawn on that leg but when you discuss 220v amperage it is still the amperage on one leg. Which means that 10 amps on 110v and 10 amps on 220 volt are the same but different because you can get 10 amps on 110v twice off a  10 amp 220 volt line because of the doubled voltage. Which only makes sense when you realize that the neutral is halfway between them but it is not halfway between zero and 220v and it is not at 110v but at zero. The neutral is always the ground but through the magic of alternating current we can ground that point and cancel both legs against either it or each other. Which is sort of a mind bending concept all by itself if you didn't know what a sine wave is.

So that should help.   

Jim

[peterbylt]

Going back to the original question on how to get by on 30 amps or less.

When I wired the coach, even though I didn’t think we would use more than 30 amps, I wired it for 50 amp, because, Why Not?

You can always use less, but if I had wired it for 30 amp you can’t use more.

It was a good thing I did wire for 50 amp, it came in useful when I installed the second Air Conditioner and the wife started using her air fryer while Both AC’s the induction cooktop and the Microwave were running.

Then when I installed the Solar system and we started doing more off Grid camping we had to tone it down a bit, I have a 3000 watt inverter and it’s a lot like being plugged into 30 amp.

The wife started to have to make some pretty rough decisions, it was almost like we were back in the old Class C, when running on the solar system she has limited herself to only two power hungry appliances at a time.

We can only run one of the ACs and one of the appliances at a time, she has been know to shut off the AC and run two appliances, to date she has only popped the inverter breaker once while running to many things at once.

If we are plugged into 30 amp we can run both ACs and the refrigerator at the same time but not much else.

If we are running off only Solar, I only run the Mini Split AC and not all the time.

If we really need to run everything at once, like Cooking Thanksgiving dinner, I fire up the generator, at 20kw it can run everything in the Bus and probably everything in the surrounding couple of Buses.

So we can easily get by on 30 amps or less with a little planning of what you need to run and when.

Peter       

[neoneddy]

We can run everything we need on 30 amps or less from shore, just requires a big battery and proper inverters.   We use 2x Victron Multiplus inverters in parallel but we feed them into a typical 50 amp panel but bridge the hots, so it's only 120v.  We don't run anything on 240v.

We can run all the way do to 14 amps on shore power, still run 2 ACs, 20gal hot water, TV, microwave, etc... all at the same time.