Question about fussy breaker

[Jim]

I've run the AC in the bedroom for months with no problem. Then last night while staying at a new RV park, the air conditioner breaker kept tripping. I would reset it and the air would run for 5 or 10 minutes and then trip again. I turned the air off, opened the bedroom window and turned on the fantastic fan in the living room. Turned out that was way more than enough as the temp went from 75 outside to about 45 in a matter of a few hours.

Now we're back at the same site and I turned on the air conditioning to cool the bedroom down. And it's running fine. It's been on about an hour and hasn't tripped the first time. The park was full last night and there were a lot of late model, high energy consuming RV's in the lot. I'm wondering if the draw on the power was so much that the park power couldn't keep up?

Any ideas?

As a side note, the air was running in the salon as well, and the breaker never tripped. Just the bedroom air conditioning breaker.

 

[Neal]

Wish you had an autoformer, wonder if you're getting hit with brownouts.

 

[Jim]

Wish you had an autoformer, wonder if you're getting hit with brownouts.

Perhaps. But it was strange that it only affected the bedroom breaker. Wondering if that breaker is wearing out and is more susceptible to fluctuation in the voltage?

 

[Neal]

Perhaps. But it was strange that it only affected the bedroom breaker. Wondering if that breaker is wearing out and is more susceptible to fluctuation in the voltage?

Easy to replace.

 

[TJ&LadyDi]

The AC breaker was probably reacting to a low-voltage situation.

When available voltage drops, amperage increases. With a heavy draw like an AC that might draw 20A at 120V, when voltage drops to 100, for example, the same unit will try to draw 24A. So, a 20A breaker will tolerate up to 20A of draw, but will open at 24A. Those numbers are purely hypothetical, but illustrate the relationship between volts and amperes.

I'm betting that you were experiencing low voltage in the park. Are you using a surge suppressor that shows low-voltage error codes? If so, did you check to see if there were any such codes?

TJ