VOLTAGE

The quality of the shore power connection varies widely as we travel across our Nation.

These photos taken at the Indian Ridge Campground in Campbellsville, Kentucky.

Here is the voltage with nothing turned on. Yep, looks good, but   .   .   .   .  .   .

Here it is with two electric heaters on. Pretty bad, Huh ! Now, since we know this, we operate our various systems differently. A purely resistive load can survive such low voltages better than motors and control circuits can. Because of that we won’t risk running our roof air conditioner with the heat strip. But the heating elements for the refrigerator and the water heater will likely be ok.

We also try to keep this test light plugged in. It tells us if we loose ground to the trailer or, maybe the neutral becomes intermittent, as well as other functions. Strangely, we seem to find an intermittent neutral more often than we expected as we travel about. Click to enlarge photo to read the label.

In this photo, Betty’s crock pot and one heater are on, note the voltage.