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Just a few comments on our electrical power service in this country.
The electrical standard in this country is 120 volts +/- 10 volts. Not 110 volts. Consequently, manufacturers of consumer appliances publish their product specifications at 120 volts, and build them to work on 110 - 130 volts. But remember, their current draw is given at the 120 volt standard. You can see this on the tags that come on the power cords on your floor fan, microwave oven, coffee pot, etc, etc.
What this means is, an 1,100 watt microwave oven drawing just a hair over 9 amps at 120 volts will draw 10 amps at 110 volts. That's a 10% increase in current draw. If you add another appliance or two on the same circuit drawing 10% more current than the manufacturer publishes, and things work fine much of the time, the additional current draw due to low voltage may be enough to trip the breaker on occasion, even though everything works fine again a little later. After everyone has had a shower and dinner and is kicked back watching TV, everything might be fine again.
Breakers get weak over time and will trip sooner than they used to. The only fix for that is to replace the breaker and throw the old one away.
In the evenings, when demand for power is high, the line voltage will go down. The greater load, with a greater current draw, pulls the voltage down. And the lower the voltage goes, the higher the current draw goes. This usually is in the evening hours when people are fixing dinner, watching TV, taking showers with water from electric hot water heaters, and with every light in the house on. Oh yes, we can't forget the air conditioners and perhaps the laundry machines. So just the time of day makes a big difference in our current draw and line voltage. If you make a note of the time of day and the line voltage, you might find this is a real problem. And it can be a real pain in the neck in some parts of the country.
My Progressive EMS works over the range from 110 volts to 130 volts before it shuts me down. And it won't power up again for two minutes nor until the line voltage comes back within that range, whichever is longer. I have the big Progressive EMS that I have chained to the power pedestal. I forget the model number. It shut me down once in two years due to low voltage. Later in the evening, everything was fine. During that time, my onboard generator set worked just fine, thank you. lol.
There are many appliances in our RVs that draw a lot of current. Any motor, compressor, or heating element are relatively big current draws. Space heaters can be huge current draws relatively speaking.
If you want to try to minimize your power usage, you might consider not using some of these high current items while others are in use if you can. If not, you may find a breaker trips more often, and you may not find anything wrong anywhere, until you check the line voltage. And yes, low voltage/high current can and does fry IC control boards sometimes because the higher current generates more heat. Can you say "Ka-Ching"?
Happy trails.
Dave
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