lawrosa wrote:
ScottG wrote:
I added a HD, 20A light switch for the converter. I used its wire that went to the breaker and rerouted it to the switch. Then I added another wire back to the breaker.
Doesnt that charge wire charge more then 20 amps depending on convertor?
But I guess for whatever reason its on a 20 amp breaker...
Wouldnt a battery disconnect suffice?
You're confusing the AC side of the converter with the DC side. The DC wires can carry more than 20A and are what the converter would be rated at. (That is to say, a 60A converter is claiming to be able to supply 60A DC at, say, 13.6V.)
The AC input requires much less current due to its higher voltage. Assuming the converter is perfectly efficient and has a perfect power factor, the AC current requirement would be somewhere between an eighth and a ninth of the output current. The power input would equal the power output. Real converters are not perfectly efficient, and tend to have relatively poor power factors, so the ratio is actually closer to maybe a sixth.
Disconnecting the AC side is preferable to disconnecting the DC side because the converter uses some power even when disconnected from the DC circuitry, and also because a suitable AC switch is a lot easier to find and less expensive than a high current DC switch.
There are other things that you generally would want to make sure are turned off when using inverter power: the fridge's AC element (i.e. set it to gas only mode), the water heater's electric element if it has one, the air conditioner....
