Electrical Issues

 Hey all,

New here, I just signed up and this is my first post. Hopefully this is in the right place for this issue. Hopefully y'all don't mind helping.

I have a tiny house,  that I built out of a shed. All of the electric and water are RV components.

I am having a big electrical issue. First off I am not hooked to the grid. I use solar and a generator for power. I have my generator and inverter hooked into a transfer switch and from there into the Progressive Dynamics PD4060KV box and then, of course, to my batteries and house electrical. When the generator is on, and the transfer switch turns off the inverter circuit, everything is great. When the generator is off, the transfer switch turns on the inverter circuit and everything goes to crap. The inverter usually faults or the wire to my battery gets super hot. I assume that this is because the inverter is pulling from the battery and charging it back up. How can this be avoided?

just a simple observation from my limited knowledge of a electrical stuff from what you have written. if wires get hot there is either a short circuit somewhere or the gauge of wire or type of wire used is not correct for the load going through it.

Sounds like the short mentioned by Bruce.
If a battery wire is getting hot then its a serious short.

I would turn all power off and follow each wire, I am confident you will find one touching some earthed steel somewhere.
Sometimes a terminal block, a ' black box' or a switch has failed.

Problems/Observations:
A. Battery wires overheat
B. Inverter shuts-down/faults after a while
C. Things work fine when you hit the transfer switch and use your generator.

Some Clarifying Questions:
A1: what size battery wire are you using?
A2: What is the voltage and amp-hour of your battery bank, are they lead battery or LiFePO4, etc?
A3: Do you have a fuse between your battery bank and the rest of your setup, if so how many amps is it rated for.
B1: What is the surge vs/and continuous power output of the inverter?
B2: What is the input and output voltage of the inverter? Is it spli-tphase 240V or is it single phase 120V AC
B3: Do you have the inverter grounded and is your ground bonded to the earth outside?
B4: Does the inverter shutdown even if you only have a single light on, or is it only after to turn on a blender (any motor really)
C1: What is the voltage and phase and power output (surge and regular) of your generator
C2: Has any appliance shock you when you have the generator plugged in?

Suggestions:
Disconnect the battery and inverter from your tiny house electrical system.
Bring them to another location (outside or shed or friends house, etc),
Then rebuild your battery bank, next connect the inverter to it.
Then connect just a 100W or less load/device/appliance directly to the inverter
Then try a bigger 500W load, then a 1000W+ load.
Then connect 300W+ motor load, (blender, saw, pump, etc)
If all of that works, the next step would be to connect all your tiny house loads/device/appliance (Pumps, microwave, blender, blow dryer, TV, Computer, lights, AC, etc), to stress test the inverted to make sure it is powerful enough and that you didn't buy a faulty inverter that needs to be returned.

FYI: I usually recommend that an inverter is matched to a battery bank that is 4X+ its rated output. So a 2,000W inverter would have a 8000WHr battery bank and not just 2000Whr (24V x 83AHr). That's because batteries prefer a discharge rate of <0.25, and alot of inverters will provide a surge output that is 2X their rated output, thus taxing the battery bank even more.

Hi Joel,

Welcome to Permies.