Quote:
Originally Posted by shoe2728
Next day he went to home depot and came back with a 10 foot grounding rod and pounding it in the ground, someone had told him that would work. He ended up running generator without the surge protector.
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I'm Mike Sokol, author of the No~Shock~Zone article on generator Ground-Neutral bonding (and a lot others). Thanks for posting links to my articles here. One important thing to know about "ground" rods is that they don't actually "ground" your RV. That's correct... the earth itself is a pretty poor ground. It's real job is shunting lightning strikes to the earth.
All RVs need to have a Ground-Neutral Bond, which does NOT have to be "earthed" to operate correctly. Normally this G-N bond would be provided by the pedestal you're powered from. Or if you have an on-board generator with a transfer switch, then that's where the G-N bond happens. However, if you run a Honda or Yamaha portable generator, it has a "floating neutral". So you need to provide your own G-N bond for when it's powering your RV via the shore power cord. A simple $2 Edison plug with a wire between the Ground and Neutral screws is all it takes. And Progressive Industries has confirmed that this is the correct fix to allow their EMS products to operate properly from a portable generator.
Please let me know if that answers your questions as to why this works. And yes, this is all covered in my RV Electrical Safety book which is available in both Kindle and Paperback versions at
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00L2DWBD8
Mike Sokol
mike@noshockzone.org
www.noshockzone.org