50 amp.... Why so big?

Roll With The Changes

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I've done some fairly extensive mods to my house on wheels and along the way I've wondered about how we got to 50 amp shore power. That question comes back up every time I drag out the huge heavy power cord to plug in. Why do we carry that beast around?

First, let's compare 30 and 50 amp service in terms of power. With 30 amp service, there is theoretically 3600 watts available and with 50 amp service there is 12000 watts available. How is it that almost overnight, the RV industry decided that we need more than three times the power to run the house. 12 kw is a lot of power! In my rig, 2 AC's, microwaveable coffee maker add up to less than 8 kw. And that's assuming no soft starts and all appliances start at the same time!

Yes, it's nice to have pretty much unlimited power available, but how much do we really need? And how much weight are we willing to carry to support that habit? Personally, my back and shoulders can't handle wrestling the 50 pound power cord in and out of its home, so I don't.

I haven't found my ideal setup yet, but most of the time I use a 10 gauge power cord that weighs about a quarter of what the beast weighs.

It seems to me, a little bit of thought in the industry would go a long way toward making things simpler and lighter.

Just my Sunday morning ramblings... I hope you enjoyed.
 
I could be way out, but don't you actually have 2 x 25amp at 120v? Which would be 2 x 3000w. 6000w total
 
After installing my MORryde tall power cord reel in my replection 5th wheel I no longer fret handling the 50 amp cord. It’s not cheap but it is a well built quality product that makes handling the cord way easier.

At home I actually plug into our 30@/240v 4-wire dryer outlet with an adaptor for the 50:amp RV plug. I can run both AC units and the converter but I watch current used when using the microwave or electric water heater.

At our cabin in addition to a dedicated 50a RV outlet on the side of the cabin I also have a 14-50R outlet with a 40 amp breaker that I primarily use for my electric car in the shed. I have plugged the RV into it on occasion and can run everything without coming close to the breaker limit.
 
From personal experience the last campsite we were at we had 30 amp. We tripped the breaker with water heater, A/C, and microwave. If I have shore power I would rather have 50 amp so I don't have to think about what I can run. If I want to think about the electric and what I can run I'll go boon docking.

So 50 amp is a very nice convenience
 
After installing my MORryde tall power cord reel in my replection 5th wheel I no longer fret handling the 50 amp cord. It’s not cheap but it is a well built quality product that makes handling the cord way easier.

At home I actually plug into our 30@/240v 4-wire dryer outlet with an adaptor for the 50:amp RV plug. I can run both AC units and the converter but I watch current used when using the microwave or electric water heater.

At our cabin in addition to a dedicated 50a RV outlet on the side of the cabin I also have a 14-50R outlet with a 40 amp breaker that I primarily use for my electric car in the shed. I have plugged the RV into it on occasion and can run everything without coming close to the breaker limit.

I'm considering a cord real as well to relieve some of the storage/carrying/dirt issues. I watch my loads and use the appropriate cord for what I'm doing at the time. Campgrounds are whatever is available, but I will also wire up a panel where I might be mooch docking if the host is agreeable.

Worst case, my 7kw generator has a 30 amp split phase output and I have never come close to maxing it out.
 
From personal experience the last campsite we were at we had 30 amp. We tripped the breaker with water heater, A/C, and microwave. If I have shore power I would rather have 50 amp so I don't have to think about what I can run. If I want to think about the electric and what I can run I'll go boon docking.

So 50 amp is a very nice convenience

I also agree that 50 amp is nice to have and use it when I can. Just thinking deeper into it... I do it all the time and it drives DW crazy.
 
After installing my MORryde tall power cord reel in my replection 5th wheel I no longer fret handling the 50 amp cord. It’s not cheap but it is a well built quality product that makes handling the cord way easier.

At home I actually plug into our 30@/240v 4-wire dryer outlet with an adaptor for the 50:amp RV plug. I can run both AC units and the converter but I watch current used when using the microwave or electric water heater.

At our cabin in addition to a dedicated 50a RV outlet on the side of the cabin I also have a 14-50R outlet with a 40 amp breaker that I primarily use for my electric car in the shed. I have plugged the RV into it on occasion and can run everything without coming close to the breaker limit.

Off topic
See you have an African parrot and a dog. I had that combo once but had to give the parrot a new home. I caught that very smart bird terrorizing our 90 lb German Shorthair Pointer Thor by “ yelling commands at him when we weren’t in the room with them. Grown dog ....heard Thor SIT, LAYDOWN.......BAD DOG in my voice . One day. Quennie had to go and I thought I would need a dog psychiatrist for the hound
 
OK, I'm going to post this right here...it's a good explanation of the 50A RV Electrical Service to our campers. I wrote this about two weeks ago after getting into a discussion on one of the Facebook Grand Design pages where there were Soooo many comments that were all the way from a little wrong....to OMG wrong. Feel free to use it as you may need to explain to others about the facts of an RV 50A Electrical service.....

I have to admit....I'm still in shock (no pun intended) at some of the outrageous and totally wrong comments/info being given on this topic. The RV electrical systems have been engineered by professional folks, following an established method of electrical distribution that is not subject to your opinion or what you think on how it "should" work, it's based on how it DOES work. So in this case, opinion is totally irrelevant.....and FACT is the determining method of RV electrical systems.

And the fact is this. A 50A RV electrical system will be comprised of two hot legs, created by what is known as a Split Phase system, and thought of as L1 and L2, a neutral wire, and a ground wire. The two hot legs will be 180 degrees out of phase with each other (and if you don't know what that means, you likely are not going to thoroughly understand how it works) and they WILL IN FACT be able to provide 50 amps of 120VAC PER LEG. In the case of a 50A RV Electrical system, it is basically the exact same as the electrical distribution system INTO your house or home. The difference between the two (RV and your house) is in the electrical distribution panel....a.k.a. the breaker panel. Up to that point (disregarding that fact that your house will use a ground rod at the service entrance and your RV has a continuous ground wire from the pedestal to your RV) the two are exactly alike. Distribution of that power is where the difference is...not the power source itself.

The RV breaker panel is made so that the 50A Main breaker is located in the center of the panel and the associated bus work for each hot leg goes in opposite directions, so it is impossible to have a 240VAC circuit any place other than the Main breaker itself. In regard to the 50A Main breaker....the LEFT most half of that breaker feeds 120VAC (with respect to neutral) only to the LEFT side of the panel for the purpose of being able to install single pole breakers into the available spaces on the LEFT side of the panel. The RIGHT most half of the 50A Main breaker feeds the bus on the RIGHT side of the panel, providing 120VAC (with respect to the neutral wire) to all of the available slots on the RIGHT side of the panel. The left side of the panel can be thought of as Phase A...or L1.....and the right side of the panel would then be Phase B... or L2....and MOST IMPORTANTLY....L1 and L2 are electrically 180 degrees OUT OF PHASE with each other. The fact that the two hot legs are 180 degrees out of phase with each other, is what allows the neutral wire to NEVER have to carry any more than 50 amps of current.....even if each leg is pulling the maximum amount of current available to each leg.....50 amps each.

It's really pretty simple if you have been trained and or have knowledge of how a split phase electrical distribution system works.....if you don't, it might be a bit troublesome and cause you to make statements that may not be true at all. Sorry for the long-winded post, but hopefully it may help clear up some of the mis-statements made in this ongoing topic.
 
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The 30 amp RV plug is 120 volts. That's 3600 watts. The 50 amp is at 240 volts. That's where the huge increase comes from.

This is often debated; hoping this doesn't spark another debate.

Our 50-amp power is not 240V, it is two legs of 120V at 50 amps per leg and is called "120/240 VAC split phase". The wiring of the park supply (hopefully), the heavy supply cord that you don't like, and the distribution of the power in the trailer are all configured to supply two legs of 120V power at 50 amps per leg. Without modification, you can't get 240V anywhere in the trailer. If you can, something is misconfigured and chances are high that the neutral is seeing about double the current that it is rated for, which will let smoke out somewhere in the circuits.

One CAN measure 240V off the incoming supply by measuring across the two hot legs, but nothing in the trailer uses the two hot legs together. Each hot leg is wired with the neutral, not the other hot leg. Measuring either hot leg to neutral - which is what everything in the trailer sees - will show 120V.

This 120/240 wiring configuration is different from 240V outlets typically required for clothing dryers and welders, for example, which require a true 240V supply.

Your observation that the 120/240V system can deliver 12,000 watts is correct, just not all on one circuit/leg. Your "2 AC's, microwaveable coffee maker" are not usually all running on the same leg for that reason - if they were you'd likely hear a 'click' from the circuit breaker panel.

EDIT: [MENTION=21739]xrated[/MENTION] beat me to the punch above while I was whittling at this post.
 
I've done some fairly extensive mods to my house on wheels and along the way I've wondered about how we got to 50 amp shore power. That question comes back up every time I drag out the huge heavy power cord to plug in. Why do we carry that beast around?

First, let's compare 30 and 50 amp service in terms of power. With 30 amp service, there is theoretically 3600 watts available and with 50 amp service there is 12000 watts available. How is it that almost overnight, the RV industry decided that we need more than three times the power to run the house. 12 kw is a lot of power! In my rig, 2 AC's, microwaveable coffee maker add up to less than 8 kw. And that's assuming no soft starts and all appliances start at the same time!

Yes, it's nice to have pretty much unlimited power available, but how much do we really need? And how much weight are we willing to carry to support that habit? Personally, my back and shoulders can't handle wrestling the 50 pound power cord in and out of its home, so I don't.

I haven't found my ideal setup yet, but most of the time I use a 10 gauge power cord that weighs about a quarter of what the beast weighs.

It seems to me, a little bit of thought in the industry would go a long way toward making things simpler and lighter.

Just my Sunday morning ramblings... I hope you enjoyed.

Its simple - Bigger is Better - right? Think back - how many trailers do you remember over 35' back then? Also back then you got the basics, Bed, hot water, shower, stove and commode. The stove and fridge were small so most folks had a cooler and Colman stove for outside. Now it 2 ac's, microwave, several TV's, stereo. Instant hot water, Residential fridge, large bath, fancy lighting, crock pot or ins-ta pot and many more power hungry gadgets. That why its called Glamping

The need for power has grown. One way to help out on a 30A service with a 50 amp trailer is an extensive solar system with a large battery bank and an a large inverter charges (3000 to 5000 watts) with power assist.

Also RV parks are now charging more for a 50A site.
 
L1 and L2 are electrically 180 degrees OUT OF PHASE with each other.

I took this for granted since this is how our residential 120/240V is.

The possibility of RV parks being wired with say 480/277 to 208/120 3phase Wye with Neutral service hadn't occurred to me.
It should have since our office building had that service from our local utility.
I remember the mechanics buying an air compressor and arc welder for the shop and they were rated for 240V, not 208V.
So that resulted in me adding a 480V to 120/240V transformer for the shop equipment.
 
[MENTION=21739]xrated[/MENTION] I agree with everything you said for the most part, except for the part about the RV 50A main breaker being in the middle of the panel. I had the same thought process as that is how my Momentum was setup. When I got my Reflection, both 50A breakers were all the way on the left side of the panel with all the other breakers on the right of those 2 breakers. My initial thought was that GD miswired the panel. I took the cover off and looked at the diagram of the panel, and indeed it was wired correctly. This is a Progressive Dynamics breaker box, not the typical WFCO box that is used. Due to the setup of this box, it is important to look at the wiring diagram if making breaker changes to ensure everything is balanced correctly.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk
 
[MENTION=21739]xrated[/MENTION] and [MENTION=12701]boyscout[/MENTION] both excellent explanations. As I was hoping, this sparked a good conversation about the how and why of RV electrical systems. I should have included the split phase explanation in my OP, but it would have gotten really long.

My point was that even with all of the big glamping loads, we don't come close to actually needing 12kw from two 50 amp legs.Just because you plug in to the 50 amp outlet doesn't mean you need to wire the entire input to the RV at 50 amps. A 30 amp main breaker in the RV panel would be plenty.... reduce wire size reduce weight and on and on. The industry preaches that they do things to save weight but I would much rather save 40 pounds of wire and put that 40 pounds into a heavier chassis or something. Little things like soft starts on the AC's would go a long way to reducing the actual power required. By all means, if you have a 42 foot condo with three AC's and tank less water heaters wire it up with 6 gauge and let it ride. But if you have a 30 ft TT with one AC then put a 50 amp split phase plug on it and a 30 amp main breaker and tone everything down a little bit. Rant over😁

And as somebody mentioned the AC's should be on opposite legs but in my last 5th wheel they were both on the same... had to fix that.
 
[MENTION=21739]xrated[/MENTION] I agree with everything you said for the most part, except for the part about the RV 50A main breaker being in the middle of the panel. I had the same thought process as that is how my Momentum was setup. When I got my Reflection, both 50A breakers were all the way on the left side of the panel with all the other breakers on the right of those 2 breakers. My initial thought was that GD miswired the panel. I took the cover off and looked at the diagram of the panel, and indeed it was wired correctly. This is a Progressive Dynamics breaker box, not the typical WFCO box that is used. Due to the setup of this box, it is important to look at the wiring diagram if making breaker changes to ensure everything is balanced correctly.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

Yes, I'm sure that there are variations of the "middle of the panel" configuration, but the bottom line is that one half of the main breaker feeds one buss....and the other half of the main breaker feeds the other buss in the panel. And MOST IMPORTANTLY, the buss is configured so the you CANNOT put in a double pole breaker and get 240VAC from the two breaker terminals.
 
My point was that even with all of the big glamping loads, we don't come close to actually needing 12kw from two 50 amp legs... By all means, if you have a 42 foot condo with three AC's and tank less water heaters wire it up with 6 gauge and let it ride.

You haven't met my wife.

Thanks all of you for your great explanations, this is why I like reading the forum, I learn stuff. I don't have clue about phases, but the comment about why the neutral never carries both legs made me realize that each time a power cord has shorted out it was the neutral post that burned up.

Yes we have a one bedroom apartment on wheels with a garage. We are on a 30 amp post this month. In order to make this work we have to be cognizant of what load we are carrying. Even with that we get EMS error messages, PE-4, Low Voltage is common. It tends to happen when something starts up, like the microwave.

When we are on 50 amp service I still mind the load, but 36 amp is about the highest I have seen on the EMS thingy on the post. So I lug my heavy old 50 amp cord around and because of you guys' discussion I now know a little more than I did before.
 
[MENTION=21739]xrated[/MENTION] and [MENTION=12701]boyscout[/MENTION] both excellent explanations. As I was hoping, this sparked a good conversation about the how and why of RV electrical systems. I should have included the split phase explanation in my OP, but it would have gotten really long.

My point was that even with all of the big glamping loads, we don't come close to actually needing 12kw from two 50 amp legs.Just because you plug in to the 50 amp outlet doesn't mean you need to wire the entire input to the RV at 50 amps. A 30 amp main breaker in the RV panel would be plenty.... reduce wire size reduce weight and on and on. The industry preaches that they do things to save weight but I would much rather save 40 pounds of wire and put that 40 pounds into a heavier chassis or something. Little things like soft starts on the AC's would go a long way to reducing the actual power required. By all means, if you have a 42 foot condo with three AC's and tank less water heaters wire it up with 6 gauge and let it ride. But if you have a 30 ft TT with one AC then put a 50 amp split phase plug on it and a 30 amp main breaker and tone everything down a little bit. Rant over��

And as somebody mentioned the AC's should be on opposite legs but in my last 5th wheel they were both on the same... had to fix that.

I guess I'm one of "those guys" with the 44' Rolling Condo.....with three A/C units, a fireplace, a Convection/Microwave and of course the 18 cu. ft. RV fridge that is propane/electric, and the 12 gallon water heater.....not to mention being able to install a washer/dryer if I wanted to and be able to plug in a portable 1500W electric heater....so I'm pretty happy with my 50A RV service for the castle. ;) And as far as dividing the A/C load, on mine there is one 15K BTU and one 13.5K BTU on one leg of the 120VAC, then the other leg has the other 15K BTU A/C on it. So it's very common to have all three of them running at the same time....in the hot summer time period. I think that the 50A service has gotten so common, that most people would think that they are getting "shorted" by the trailer manufacturer if they only came with a 30A service. Plus, one the ones with only one A/C but prewired for the second one.....and having that fireplace, water heater, Convection/Microwave, etc.....you still need to have a 50 to service that much equipment.
 
My 30amp emc shut down when I reached 30amp. The coffee pot, electric water heater and microwave at the same time reached 30amp.


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You haven't met my wife.

Thanks all of you for your great explanations, this is why I like reading the forum, I learn stuff. I don't have clue about phases, but the comment about why the neutral never carries both legs made me realize that each time a power cord has shorted out it was the neutral post that burned up.

Yes we have a one bedroom apartment on wheels with a garage. We are on a 30 amp post this month. In order to make this work we have to be cognizant of what load we are carrying. Even with that we get EMS error messages, PE-4, Low Voltage is common. It tends to happen when something starts up, like the microwave.

When we are on 50 amp service I still mind the load, but 36 amp is about the highest I have seen on the EMS thingy on the post. So I lug my heavy old 50 amp cord around and because of you guys' discussion I now know a little more than I did before.

Edit/removed..........it really was an inaccurate description and a poor attempt of me trying to explain neutral current in a Split Phase System
 
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