Offgrid camping and powering inverter?

[glarior]

Is there a way to use the campers inverter offgrid? I would love to watch tv or power my blender without having to start the generator everytime. Plus some places dont allow generators. I have soloar panels and batteries ill eventually install... someday :-)

Suggestions?

[SaskCampers]

Originally Posted by glarior

Is there a way to use the campers inverter offgrid? I would love to watch tv or power my blender without having to start the generator everytime. Plus some places dont allow generators. I have soloar panels and batteries ill eventually install... someday :-)

Suggestions?

Are you sure you have an inverter? Most units do not have one from the factory but all of them have a converter (which converts 115 Volts AC from your house or rv park) to the 12 Volts DC that most items in a camper use such as your lights water pump LP gas detector etc. You may have a 12 volt outlet somewhere in your trailer around the tv possibly which you could plug a small inverter into but the wiring is usually very light to these and it will limit the power the inverter can produce. I would suggest a pure sine wave inverter hard wired to your battery with as short as possible cables to the inverter from the battery.

[bikendan]

A-frames don't have inverters.
It has a CONverter. All RVs come with converters. Few come with INverters.
You'd have to install one.

[stevejahr]

x2 that most factory RVs will not have an inverter, only a converter.

A modern LCD television really does not take much power. YMMV but I have found a cheap modified square wave 400W inverter plugged into the cigarette lighter power plug drives my Furrion flat panel TV just fine.

Just beware of the power consumption which must balance power availability. If your TV consumes 100W... that is 8.3A being pulled from your battery. By way of comparison your heater fan probably pulls half that, so this is a high load for a 12V battery. Especially since it is a constant long duration load. A dead battery can result quicker than you might want unless you offset that consumption with some production.

[Pooneil]

You will need a big inverter to run most home blenders. To draw that much current off one deep cycle battery may do some damage. Deep cycles are made for deep discharge at the expense of fast discharge. Starting batteries are made for fast discharge but can't be taken to a low level of charge very often.

Most TVs have a fairly low draw, so for that alone you could find an inverter that matches the wattage. Or find a 12 Volt TV.

[bikendan]

Yep and that blender will deplete the batteries.
I'd have two 6v golf cart batteries if I was going to use that heavy a power draw.

[mzak]

My TV is 12 volt 24" Insignia and pulls 3 amps. I run TV off of trailer battery however my Blender pulls over 40 amps at 12 volts so as others say it would take a large inverter to handle that so no blender for me.. I do use my 750 watt inverter to power an electric coffeemaker. It pulls around 6 amps at 12 volts and I carry a second battery to run inverter.

[stevejahr]

I think you may need one of these:

The Daiquiri Whacker Gas Powered Portable Blender

[glarior]

Haha yes thise gas power blenders are awesome. Someone always had one after everyone was done racing. Good times.

Thank you for correcting me on the inverter. After yall said its a converter everything makes sense. I will have to do some thinking on the setup.

The tvs do not use much power anymore. We run one at the ranch and it barly drains the battery.

I have some thinking to do. Thanks everyone!

[pdqparalegal1]

I use a cheap inverter to power the tv and Direct tv sat. Works ok

[clintbonnie73]

Originally Posted by glarior

Is there a way to use the campers inverter offgrid? I would love to watch tv or power my blender without having to start the generator everytime. Plus some places dont allow generators. I have soloar panels and batteries ill eventually install... someday :-)

Suggestions?

Take the time and hook up your solar panels (make it portable so you can move it to where the sun is) and along with an inverter capable of handling your power requirement and you will be fine.. (along as the 2 batteries are in good shape). I have a 100 watt panel and a small inverter and it powers my dvr/tv just fine.. good luck

[johntaylor]

Originally Posted by mzak

My TV is 12 volt 24" Insignia and pulls 3 amps. I run TV off of trailer battery however my Blender pulls over 40 amps at 12 volts so as others say it would take a large inverter to handle that so no blender for me.. I do use my 750 watt inverter to power an electric coffeemaker. It pulls around 6 amps at 12 volts and I carry a second battery to run inverter.

Your blender will use 12V x 40A = 480 watts, so your 750 watt inverter will handle it fine. You only run a blender for a few seconds, so the battery usage will be negligible.

[tahoe1840]

Finished doing the research and install of an inverter on our 5th wheel. My DW likes protein shakes in the morning so running a blender was key. The draw of the blender was so negligible on battery drain, the blender only runs for less then a minute so don't worry about the drain. LCD television as well draws so little in fact on a recent trip we watched a 2 1/2 hour DVD movie so two appliances were running (TV and DVD player) the draw on the battery was .1 volts or 12.7 volts to 12.6 volts. What really draws is electric fry pans, coffee makers etc. Look for the draw on the appliance itself, somewhere on the appliance there will be a label or engraving telling the draw in watts. Let that be your guide when purchasing the inverter. We started off with a 400 watt inverter and ended up with a 1500 watt, modified sine wave. Two 6 volt golf cart batts. Ran a dedicated inverter circuit to 3 outlets in the coach. Use a solar suitcase panels for recharging batteries when we have full sun otherwise its the generator. I could not be happier with this system, works great!

[Skyliner]

A transfer switch wired to separate inverter from generator (shore?) power is an easy way to make inverter use seamless. When my inverter is on, I can use any plug in the camper.

[mzak]

Originally Posted by johntaylor

Your blender will use 12V x 40A = 480 watts, so your 750 watt inverter will handle it fine. You only run a blender for a few seconds, so the battery usage will be negligible.

I stand corrected. I erroneously used 120v instead of 12v to arrive at wattage. Good catch!