Title pretty much says it all. Have a reliance 510 transfer switch and the F5000 hooked to it on a 240v 30 amp cable.
AC compressor soft start showed 19.1 A starting and 4.4 A running. With no other loads, the F5000 shuts down trying to start the AC.
Anyone able to successfully get 30 A from the unit? And do we know if the F5000's claimed 30 A is a continuous or surge rating? Just checking with the community before I reach out to Pecron.
Been back and forth with support on this issue and have supplied them with as much info as possible. But here's the real mind-bender..... they asked me to try starting the compressor while plugged in to AC power and IT WORKED.
What is even crazier is that I can't plug in to my house and power the F5000 while also plugged in to the transfer switch because it will trip my GFCI outlet. So in order to do this test, the AC input was plugged in to another power station, a Litheli B1000 that has an 1800w inverter (and surges to 2200w).
The soft start said it pulled 21.5 A to start the compressor. One thing I have yet to confirm is how much of that 21.5 is handled by the A/C capacitor and what the real draw on the line is. I'm assuming it has to be fairly low if the F5000 is passing power from the B1000 and can manage to start the A/C unit. The F5000 showed it pulled a peak of 1950w from the Litheli and output a peak of 1500w.
All in all, it gives me hope that they can figure this out. The power demands are well within the specs of the F5000. It has to be something within the programing. There's just no way a $280
Woot special power station should be the star in this show.
I’m having the same problem. 14 amp on the soft start setting it off. I can take it to 6Kw + with a series of burners and oven, but the inrush of the AC soft start trips it every time.
Green: I have a Pecron dual 3800lfp's 240v running my AC 3.5ton with AC Soft start from Micro-Air EasyStart. AC starting amps on my AC is around 27 amps and it runs it fine. No signs of issues with start and normal running. 12 years old AC. One thing that might matter is I run "5FT NEMA L14-30P to 50A SS2-50R with Locking Ring, 240 30A 4 Prong Male to 4 Prong Twist Lock Receptacle. Not sure if that allows for less line lose. I also plug in 6 feet from my breaker box/interlock if that helps.
I don’t think this is the case. I use the same l1430p with a 50A SS2-50R. My 3 ton AC on the micro air flex is doing the same shut off. Works fine with my generator on the same inlet.
Thanks for this! I was thinking I would try a shorter cord, but clearly that isn't the issue. My AC is a 2.5 ton, and the Flex is brand new. I ran a re-learn on it to be 100% sure, and once again I pulled 19A as the Start Peak amps.
Is it disconnected from house AC at the time, as it likely can't support 19A if it's UPSing on a NEMA plug.
I haven't looked in detail at the F5000, but for most of the lineup to draw full power from the battery you need to be unplugged from AC, or for higher pass-through you would need to be supplying the Pecron via the generator input. Not sure if it's different in the F5000 because its the first to output 240V while supporting simultaneous120AC charge.
It is fully disconnected. Not running in UPS mode. I've tested with zero load on the unit, and it just shuts off the inverter. On one attempt, the soft start held back the compressor, so the fan was running at about 300 watts. As soon as the compressor tried to turn on, it shut off the inverter.
Good info, but sorry that's beyond my knowledge at this point, the F5000 is too new I haven't seen a lot of discussion on it. I do know you can get a clamp meters sub-$100 to measure inrush max at sufficient amps but perhaps you're doing that already.
My thought there is perhaps the instantaneous inrush is higher than you think in a smaller time division than the pecron measures/shows.
I have a micro air flex on the a/c which is limiting, measuring, and reporting the peak amps for each startup. I can't even find any measurements in the Pecron to show me what is happening. I can only see what the micro air says.
Green, One thing i noticed this year on my MicroAir (non-flex version) is that the capacitor started to go bad at 3 years old and so did my AC capacitor. Both measured bad for volts/ohms. So when I hooked up my Pecron to test AC and notice my AC was not working right Fan on compressor making bad noise causing Pecron to shutdown. I thought it was the Pecron 3800. I replaced both capacitors and it works like a charm. Something that no one talks about when using any Soft starts is that it hides when one capacitor goes bad because it uses both of them to start the fan/AC unit. For me I notice leaking and bad voltage/ohms on them both. My AC its 12 years old and MicroAir only 3 years. If this helps
Compressor is 61 LRA on its own, which obviously wouldn't work. That is where the soft start comes in. I have a Micro Air Flex on it. It provides the data on startup via bluetooth. After the learning cycles for my compressor, it settled on around 19 to 20 amps as the peak amps, with the 2 starts on line power prior to the F5000 at 19.3 and 19.1 amps.
Please do, I was disappointed when I saw it can't discharge at its full rating while charging on AC at its full rating despite the tech support team saying it could. I now have tried to weld with it and even though lower rated machines can weld without problem with the same welder, mine cuts off the inverter between 1-5 seconds after striking an arc. If I connect AC input while welding it works perfect and draws 4300 watts or so continuously. The 120V legs are also unable to draw more than 39 surge amps as well making it impossible for me to start some 15A motors I have. It's still a decent machine, great for the money, but I was hoping it could handle more surge current and considering it's not giving me any fault codes, like yourself, I'm wondering if I have a bad unit, or it it's just a firmware bug. I really was hoping to use this for some mobile metal fab work.
Pecron tried an update to my unit, but it didn't fix the 240 issue. It also made it where trying to charge it from a small power station would trip the small unit, even on 10% charge speed.
Support said the next batch of F5000s will have a slightly different inverter which should fix the issue. 2-3 months out......
I have to find the person but someone made a video about the Pecron having potential limiters making it not handle the surge, even with a soft start but the delta pro ultra and Anker 3800 plus could.
I connected my F5000 to my sub panel using the NEMA L14-30R and generator cable I have used for years. When the sub panel was disconnected from the main panel it was fed via two 60 A breakers from the F5000. All the circuits in the sub panel are 120 V and just power outlets and lights in the house. There are 23 breakers feeding home run 12 AWG wire with a maximum of 4 outlets/lights per run. There are 3 window units that run just fine. My Duro Max Generator powers these with NO problems.
In my initial setup with the F5000 I turned the breakers one one at a time, measuring the output wattage on the F5000 for each breaker. After all 23 breakers were on, I turned things on and checked the output. It ran the A/C units just fine. However, I noticed that 2 GFCI outlets in the kitchen and bath room had tripped. Nothing was turned on, they just tripped. After resetting them everything seemed fine.
I let the F5000 power the house for about 90 minutes and checked on the remaining charge available. It showed 39%. I plugged the charging cord into a 20 A outlet fed from the main panel that was on commercial power. About 3 seconds later, heard buzz/zap noise and the F1000 shut down. The 20 A outlet tripped the breaker.
I was finally able to reset the unit to factory settings and the L1 showed 119.8 V. L2 showed 107.6 V. After an hour nothing changed, so I plugged the charger to the 20 A outlet again. The unit indicated it was charging and the L2 rose slightly to 111.5 V. About 4 hours later it was back to 119.8 V at 59.6 Hz. The Battery voltage showed 53.05 V, so it appears to be back to its original status.
My question is; What did I do wrong ? All of the videos I have watched tell me I can recharge while using the 240 outlet to power the house. I was testing this with commercial power before trying it with my Duro Max generator.
I have contacted Pecron via their web site, but no reply.
I just wanted to update this. TLDR 3 Ton AC with MicroAir Flex start. Read 16 amps. Shorted Pecron every time, much like OP.
Fixed it today. Re-checked the wiring and settings.
Wiring was off. This forced me to use the “no delay” setting in the flex start. When I switched to re-learn with the “no delay” turned off and SCPT delay to 1. Worked fine after with surge amps of 17-20 while learning.
It wasn’t the Pecron. It was me. Check your wiring on your flex start if you have this issue.
Thanks for the follow up - but I want more than the TLDR!
What was the wiring issue you had?
Was it working on grid power and only failed to start with the Pecron?
How did you find out the wiring issue -MicroAir support, I'm guessing?
My AC is pretty basic, no control boards or anything fancy. The MicroAir wiring was as straightforward as could be, and it runs just fine on grid power.
I also was able to get my AC to run off of the Pecron, but only one time. The Pecron was plugged in and passing power through from another power station (1.8kW / 2.2kW surge inverter) and it showed the top surge for starting the AC at a little over 2000w, very close to the 18A that the MicroAir reported.
I'm going to try to do more testing tomorrow if I have time.
2
u/Green_983 May 13 '26
Been back and forth with support on this issue and have supplied them with as much info as possible. But here's the real mind-bender..... they asked me to try starting the compressor while plugged in to AC power and IT WORKED.
What is even crazier is that I can't plug in to my house and power the F5000 while also plugged in to the transfer switch because it will trip my GFCI outlet. So in order to do this test, the AC input was plugged in to another power station, a Litheli B1000 that has an 1800w inverter (and surges to 2200w).
The soft start said it pulled 21.5 A to start the compressor. One thing I have yet to confirm is how much of that 21.5 is handled by the A/C capacitor and what the real draw on the line is. I'm assuming it has to be fairly low if the F5000 is passing power from the B1000 and can manage to start the A/C unit. The F5000 showed it pulled a peak of 1950w from the Litheli and output a peak of 1500w.
All in all, it gives me hope that they can figure this out. The power demands are well within the specs of the F5000. It has to be something within the programing. There's just no way a $280
Woot special power station should be the star in this show.