Gulf Stream Owners RV Forum - View Single Post

hossross · 03-16-2022, 07:52 PM

1) How far away from the battery is your inverter Bike Dr
2) For those that had factory installed inverters, how do they isolate the inverter from shore power. Ie if both are turned on do they both feed the common wall outlets? This should never be done as the phase relationship is not going to be synched and equipment will be fried. I suspect based on the switches that Bike Dr mentioned, it was up to the user to manually turn on and off the inverter, 1 to save the batteries, and 2 to protect from dual source of shore power AC and inverted AC. Inverted AC is always sloppy and will cause some overheating of equipment, unless it has been updated to true sign wave and only if it really is true, on just on the label.
Also my opinion on the use of inverters, they are not generally made to power high amperage 110 V electrical equipment. Ie AC never, refridgerator maybe but if starting amps is more than 8 thats a lot of DC power.
Inverters are great for modern TVs and and stereo systems as they are very low AC amperage draw. Infact for the older coaches, just getting a 500 watt inverter as an addon piece will power many TVs and not require either shore power or running the generator. I don't know what amps a modern microwave draws, but is nice to have the quick heater without starting the generator. But for the formula if 110 V and 5amps then that is 550 watts. if powered from inverter 550 watts divided by12 V equals almost 48 amps with conversion losses, so that requires big, big wire from the battery to the inverter. So small things can be powered by almost any 12 V source, but something a mild as 5 ams needs special and dedicated wiring to power the inverter.
I once saw a person wanting to by a Harbor Freight 2000 Watt inverter to run their oxygen generator in the RV to save running the generator while driving and overnight. They had no one to hook up the wires to the stand alone inverter, and had no idea it couldn't be powered off any 12V cigarette lighter connection. It is possible, just understand that watts must equal watts, to get the convince we desire. Chuck eluded to this in his post.

03-16-2022, 07:52 PM	#14
hossross Senior Member Join Date: Jul 2020 Location: Detroit Posts: 127	1) How far away from the battery is your inverter Bike Dr 2) For those that had factory installed inverters, how do they isolate the inverter from shore power. Ie if both are turned on do they both feed the common wall outlets? This should never be done as the phase relationship is not going to be synched and equipment will be fried. I suspect based on the switches that Bike Dr mentioned, it was up to the user to manually turn on and off the inverter, 1 to save the batteries, and 2 to protect from dual source of shore power AC and inverted AC. Inverted AC is always sloppy and will cause some overheating of equipment, unless it has been updated to true sign wave and only if it really is true, on just on the label. Also my opinion on the use of inverters, they are not generally made to power high amperage 110 V electrical equipment. Ie AC never, refridgerator maybe but if starting amps is more than 8 thats a lot of DC power. Inverters are great for modern TVs and and stereo systems as they are very low AC amperage draw. Infact for the older coaches, just getting a 500 watt inverter as an addon piece will power many TVs and not require either shore power or running the generator. I don't know what amps a modern microwave draws, but is nice to have the quick heater without starting the generator. But for the formula if 110 V and 5amps then that is 550 watts. if powered from inverter 550 watts divided by12 V equals almost 48 amps with conversion losses, so that requires big, big wire from the battery to the inverter. So small things can be powered by almost any 12 V source, but something a mild as 5 ams needs special and dedicated wiring to power the inverter. I once saw a person wanting to by a Harbor Freight 2000 Watt inverter to run their oxygen generator in the RV to save running the generator while driving and overnight. They had no one to hook up the wires to the stand alone inverter, and had no idea it couldn't be powered off any 12V cigarette lighter connection. It is possible, just understand that watts must equal watts, to get the convince we desire. Chuck eluded to this in his post.