Powering Your Camper With An Inverter?
We are going dry camping next week and were interested in using an inverter. Sure, we've used a small inverter inside the camper using the 12V outlets to power things like a TV, a laptop, a CPAP, etc...
Forum Discussion
An inverter is just a piece of a complete setup. The biggest limitation will be the ampere-hours on the batteries, followed by how one gets the batteries recharged, be it solar or a generator.
If you want to power the outlets, you need an inverter with a transfer switch. That way, when plugged into shore power, the inverter is switched out, and the outlets are directly connected to the incoming 120VAC.
Regardless of size, I'd probably pony up for a decent PSW model. MSW ones can cause things to run hotter or give strange/unknown malfunctions of appliances that are connected.
There are some workarounds though. I bought for fairly cheap a 20 amp/hour "external battery" from Amazon which puts out enough juice to charge up to six amps at once, with up to four devices. It definitely will charge an iPad and iPhone to full and keep them topped off over a weekend. I use this at night when I need to keep my phone charged, but don't want to run a 3000 watt generator to charge a phone which only accepts 1/2 an amp.
I wonder if one of the "power packs" which is a small battery, charger, and inverter would be something useful for the CPAP. Ideally, the best thing would be to have a CPAP that takes 8-12 hour batteries, and at least 3-4 of those, but those are fairly expensive.
If you want to power the outlets, you need an inverter with a transfer switch. That way, when plugged into shore power, the inverter is switched out, and the outlets are directly connected to the incoming 120VAC.
Regardless of size, I'd probably pony up for a decent PSW model. MSW ones can cause things to run hotter or give strange/unknown malfunctions of appliances that are connected.
There are some workarounds though. I bought for fairly cheap a 20 amp/hour "external battery" from Amazon which puts out enough juice to charge up to six amps at once, with up to four devices. It definitely will charge an iPad and iPhone to full and keep them topped off over a weekend. I use this at night when I need to keep my phone charged, but don't want to run a 3000 watt generator to charge a phone which only accepts 1/2 an amp.
I wonder if one of the "power packs" which is a small battery, charger, and inverter would be something useful for the CPAP. Ideally, the best thing would be to have a CPAP that takes 8-12 hour batteries, and at least 3-4 of those, but those are fairly expensive.
