travelingbard wrote:
So would the inverter be connected to power the 110 outlets all the time, regardless of what the power source is? Such as shore power or generator only powers batteries and inverter always pulls from batteries to supply 110 to RV? In the case, switching would be a non-issue, obviously. If that's the case, would that shorten the life of the batteries themselves?
Thanks to everyone for your replies thus far!!
That's indeed what I would do—that's the simplest way to ensure uninterrupted power to the computers and involves the fewest unneeded power conversions when running off of battery power, which is good for efficiency and run time on battery power.
Your battery life should not be shortened appreciably provided your converter/charger is capable of supplying at least as much current as the inverter draws (on the average). Essentially, when the generator is running or the shore power is connected, you're powering the inverter from the converter rather than the batteries. (This does mean the batteries will charge less quickly when the computers are in use, of course; current that would be going to charge the batteries is instead going to power the computers.) As a very very rough rule of thumb, you can guess the converter uses 1A per 10W of power it's supplying.
The computers will, on average, usually consume a good bit less power than their power consumption stickers suggest; what's listed is for the maximum power consumption. Exactly how much varies with what you're doing (how busy the CPU is, how much disk activity there is, and so forth). Something like a kill-a-watt would be a good way to figure this out somewhat accurately for your work.
