Dave Solberg

Using a 50 Amp RV Electrical System

Dave Solberg

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Duration:   2  mins

Description

RV electrical systems bring power inside the unit from an outside source. This includes power being supplied by an onboard or portable generator, as well as grounded city and campground sources. Your RV electrical systems will typically have a power cord commonly referred to as a “shoreline” cord on the outside of the unit, where you can easily connect the outside power source to your RV.

This gives you the power you need to fuel all of your appliances and gadgets during your stay at a campground. Larger units with two roof air conditioners and an abundance of appliances require more power and can be outfitted with a 50 amp distribution center. In this quick lesson, RV expert Dave Solberg runs you through a breakdown of the standard RV electrical systems you’ll encounter on your travels of this beautiful country, explaining what you can expect when you hook up your fifth wheel vehicle.

An Overview of Common RV Electrical Systems

With Dave’s helpful overview, you’ll be able to navigate proper hookup and maintenance of any electrical system. He begins with the power cord, which is most commonly hardwired to the vehicle and stored in the service center. However, some models feature a quick connect that simply plugs into a campground source or storage facility and twists to a locking ring on the side of the coach. Dave shows you how to connect your quick connect, if this is the option your vehicle carries.

With a 50 amp service, you should have enough power to run both of the roof air conditioners – front and back – and other appliances in the RV. Understanding the power requirements of your RV is critical to proper energy management. Older roof air conditioners can draw up to 18 amps at maximum capacity. Newer, more efficient models draw approximately 14 amps.

Some campground electrical sources and storage facilities may only have access to 30-amp power. This will offer limited power capabilities to operate the RV electrical systems, thus it’s likely that you’ll only be able to run one roof air conditioner at a time. If you have a 50 amp shoreline cord, you will need to utilize a reducer and limit your appliance usage. This can be good for keeping batteries charged when your RV is in storage.

Once connected, the power will flow into your vehicle’s distribution center, which houses all of the circuit breakers for the microwave, both air conditioning units and any other appliance or gadget in the RV that runs on electricity. This is the hub of all RV electrical systems, and it’s important that you know what you’re looking at when you open this up.

Dave also emphasizes the importance of making sure that you shut off the power to your RV before connecting and disconnecting from an outside power source. If you don’t, you’ll likely experience arcs of electricity, which over time can tarnish the probes and lead to melted plugs and loss of power at inopportune times. If connected correctly, you will have plenty of power to operate all of the electrical components on your RV. Take advantage of Dave’s handy hints for well maintained RV electrical systems, and you won’t run into any surprises while you’re out on the road!

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5 Responses to “Using a 50 Amp RV Electrical System”

  1. Michael Mcleod

    What does it mean if you’re 50 cord only one LED lights up

  2. Linda Oden

    My 1993 rockwood prestuge 5th wheel has a 4 pronged power cord(shorline cord) but my space in a trailer park has a 3 pronged outlet to plug into. How does that work?

  3. Paul

    <strong> Ticket#17396 I need to replace the 50 amp Marinco inlet, due to the outlet having a burned connection, which also burned my cord connection. Can I replace the inlet from the outside of my 5th wheel, by removing the 4 screws on the inlet cover?

  4. Lou Hebert

    Worthless

  5. Terry

    some campgrounds only have a 50 amp hook up...and I have a 30amp shore line will it matter..

The electrical system is brought into a trailer either by an outside campground source or an onboard generator. Now this fifth wheel we have here has a 50 amp service. So we've got one of the quick connect plugs, here it's gonna go on the outside. So we're gonna have to come out here and plug this in every time, do a little twist on it. And then it, has a little lock ring on the outside here, and holds that in place. Now, the nice thing about a 50 amp service is that I've got enough power then to run two roof air conditioners at one time. If I'm only at 30 amps I'm pretty much limited to the front or the back if I wanna use anything else inside the system. But now this is gonna go into our distribution center. At the distribution center we'll have circuit breakers that are going to be used for our microwave, our roof air conditioners, the refrigerator that runs off of electricity. Now with the 50 amp service, if I happen to get into a campground that only has 30 amp, or I'm storing it, then I need to use a reducer. And here we see a typical 30 amps so it's taking the 50 down to 30 amp. I can plug this in, but then again I got to realize I'm only using a 30 amp service so I've gotta be careful what I have inside. But during storage, this is this is a good reducer to use because I don't need to be running a whole bunch of stuff inside and basically just keeping my batteries topped off and so forth. The nice thing about this storage facility is our owner here has actually dedicated a circuit to just this 30 amp. So we're not trying to plug into a residential one. A lot of people will pull up their garage or a storage facility, and they'll plug into a typical outlet which is a 15 amp gang with other ones here. This one's dedicated to 30 amp just for this so it's a nice system. But overall a 50 amp service allows us to do both roof air conditioners. Nice easy plug in here. The only other thing I would recommend before we wrap up here is make sure when you plug and unplug your cords that you shut the power off before you plug it in. Test the power before you plug it in at the campground source. But then also before you unplug it, shut the power off. If you plug it in, pull out you're gonna start getting little arcs coming from that campground source. That'll start to tarnish these probes in here. And once that starts to happen, it's gonna it'll actually heat up and melt this plug in and we'll lose some power. So make sure you do that. So with this easy type of plug here allows us to bring 50 amp service and I can use both roof air conditioners and the microwave inside. So I'm not limited to what I have or I can reduce it down to 30 amp. So this is a very nice system.

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