Carver Owners Forum

I have a Charles inverter/charger that charges as designed while on shore power. The charge side of the inverter does not seem to like the power when supplied by the Generator. I suspect the inverter has very sensitive relays that are causing the issue. I have spoken with Charles and still have not been able to resolve the issue. The inverter and generator work as designed except for this. Any feedback is welcomed.

Have you made any changes to your battery layout on the generator? The reason I ask is some connect to the engine start battery and eliminate the generator battery. This works fine but will generate some issues as now you are charging from the generator alternator and the Charles charger assuming you are charging with the Charles while running the generator. This usually works OK however when the alternator and the charger are competing at charging a battery, usually the dumber one (alternator) wins and your Charles will output very low although you are still getting a charge albeit from the alternator. Hope that was clear.

I think Hans was referring to the same thing but some chargers aren't good at dealing with conflicting charges on the same battery/bank. This is most typical when one of these chargers is hooked up to the generator battery. When the charger is operating with the generator running, it sees a conflicting charge from the generator's charging system. This drives some charging computers nuts and will shut down that particular charge leg or all of them depending on the charger. Some chargers aren't affected by this at all. The remedy is to disconnect the charger from the generator battery or install a switch to shut off the charge to the generator battery when you run the generator.

If your charger is hooked up to the generator battery, try disconnecting that leg then run the generator and see if the charger still acts up. If it works properly, don't hook it back up, the generator is capable of maintaining its battery on its own. The caution here and with installing the switch mentioned above is that some chargers need ALL outputs hooked up. If yours is like that, just hook it up to another battery or jump that output to another one at the charger output bar in the charger.

This is all assuming your generator is outputting properly, both voltage and frequency. I've always said every boat should have an on-board frequency meter. These have gotten very affordable and come in handy to monitor marina output as well as your generator. There are digital units you can install in your electrical panel that will also show other info like voltage, amps etc. or ones that will plug into any outlet so you can monitor power quality.
This is an example of what I'm talking about: https://www.amazon.ca/Yeeco-Digital-45-65-0Hz-Frequency-Voltmeter/dp/B01ER5DWDU/ref=sr_1_21?s=industrial&ie=UTF8&qid=1526004979&sr=1-21&keywords=frequency+meter

After hours of evaluating voltage with a meter, I discovered that the battery switch between the house batteries and inverter was not working properly. My issue was difficult to identify because the switch allowed proper current to flow at times and partial current at times. I replaced the switch and now have a proper charge to batteries from inverter on gen or shore power. FYI, I believe that vibration etc made it difficult to identify a faulty battery switch-