Reverse polarity & generator

[Danny55]

Hoping someone out there knows what my problem is as not yet found an electrician who does!!!

Have a KV8 generator - it runs fine - problem is when I try to put any load on through the inverter - reverse polarity warning light comes on and after 30 seconds the inverter trips back to battery power.

Any thoughts welcome!

[Dave Clinton]

Hoping someone out there knows what my problem is as not yet found an electrician who does!!!

Have a KV8 generator - it runs fine - problem is when I try to put any load on through the inverter - reverse polarity warning light comes on and after 30 seconds the inverter trips back to battery power.

 

Any thoughts welcome!

 

Have any of your electricians swapped the output of the generator live and neutral?

 

Have you checked that your earth and neutral are bonded?

[sjc]

The warning shows a mis-match between the generator and the inverter, so as previously mentioned checking the live neutral swap is the best bet. However, there is also a slim chance it is your boat that has been swapped. Does your boat work ok with a shoreline ? Could you try your generator on a friend's boat ? Or their generator on yours ? These tests should tell you where the fault lies.

[Danny55]

Many thanks for those responses; will check out your suggestions today and come back later.

[Chewbacka]

If the generator has a floating output, ie neither side bonded to earth then the charger will get confused as to which wire is the live wire.

But you are investigating high voltages, so if you are not sure what to check or correct then get someone that does. Better safe than dead.

You can buy a plug in socket checker which will check for missing earth, live neutral swap etc. try plugging one of those into the gennie with nothing else connected would be a good start, also no need to open up the generator. Sorry if you know what you are doing and therefore this sounds patronising.