AC takes a lot of power to start up but my Coleman Mach unit will settle around 1500 watts onces its running. I am able to drive mine off a 3000 watt inverter with some LFP batteries without much issue and still have power left over.

You can get a soft starter to reduce the startup power of the AC unit which is what I did and the AC starts really quietly. You can barely hear it come on over the blower fan itself.

The F150 should be able to provide provide the full 30 amps which means you should be able to run everything, but its possible if you had like the microwave running and then the AC unit tried to start up that you could exceed 30 amps briefly. My recommendation is that you get a soft starter if you intend to abuse the AC power in the camper while hooked up to the truck.

The truck is 7200 watts but thats on a 220v connection, you have to divide that in half for a 30A RV connector since it would only be connected to a single side of the trucks 220V circuit. Really you have 3600 watts which is exactly 30 amps at 120V.

 

Please let me know where campgrounds exist that can do that. Most of the 30A lines I've connected to can't even hit 30A.

 

Do you use an adapter to connect to the 50A connection to give some overhead? I hadnt thought of that before but I also havent really ever been running my trailer super hard to where I would max out 30A.

 

I can't say I know, I've never camped at a campground. But I am a contractor with EE background, and I do have some understanding of how breakers, trip curves, etc work, and I do own an amp clamp and can confirm that residential breakers can momentarily peak at 5x their rating without magnetically tripping, and ACs regularly have LRA ratings in the 5X their running load rating. I'm pretty sure a lot of RVers at campgrounds don't have soft starts and their ACs seem to run.

 

I camp a lot and can confirm what you said.
Folks that do not work in our field (retired master electrician here) don't realize the momentary inrush of a motor starting will be 6X running current. Like you mentioned connected to shore power provides that cushion.to allow startup but a small generator cannot so it stalls out unless the motor has a soft starter added to it

 

Back to the thread, here's one option for an adapter to make this work:
Note that again this will only use one leg of power, so you will have a full extra 3600W available from the other leg via half of the 120V outlets.

 

I personally do not even need 30A, but I know that the majority of the US campground electric infrastructure is in a really bad state, and many have never even had enough of a feed to cover more than 50% of their hookup capacity. Modern campers carry more batteries, so they are drawing more to recharge when they pull in camp. They've got more power accessories... power leveling jacks, power awnings, microwaves, TV's, stereos, lighting anywhere and everywhere. Don't forget about the power slides, LOL. Power, power, power. And even though a lot of this is used only intermittently, it all has bumped the demands on the weak power feeds that most campgrounds have had since the 50's and 60's.

No, I don't have the higher amp connection, and I actually shoot for 30a only sites because a lot fewer generators are used by the smaller camper crowd. Even if I did, I'd still need the buck/boost/brownout regulator as the higher amp feeds are no less prone to voltage being way underfunded on hot days.


A/C compressors already come with soft-start capacitors. RV'ers use MORE because the voltage at campgrounds can get pretty low, you run one just to protect your motors from burnout if they try to kick on during a mild brownout.

It's better to use a regulator, through, which will keep voltage steady if it can get enough current, and will kill power if it can't, to protect your stuff from even mild abuse.

 

I appreciate all the responses but my background is in chemical engineering and I always left the electrical stuff to the electrical guys, you all are way too smart to decipher if my truck will run my camper or not or what I need to purchase or not purchase. Thanks for all the responses, I will go back through and see what I can figure out or maybe just go out and spend the night in the driveway and see what happens.

 

You don't need to. There have been many people that have already done just that and posted videos on Youtube.

Personally, I don't like the thought of idling my vehicles for long periods of time and my pair of 1,700 watt inverter generators burn about 1/2 the fuel per hour on similar loads. The big advantage to the onboard power (besides being one less thing to lug camping) is the sound level is less than even the quietest Honda inverter churning away on a 2,000-ish watt load.

 

It's quite interesting what you put in bold. I guess my Power Boost truck never got the message it couldn't power a travel trailer. Why, just this past Memorial Day weekend, my TT was powered 85 hours by my Power Boost.


For plugging 2 travel trailers into the Power Boost. Each leg delivering 3600 Watts.

Notice the single trailer power cord running into the bed of the truck. Trailer ran 85 hours.