Adding Inverter

I recently read an article about cooking on the go, using a crock pot via an inverter. The gist of it was when traveling to a destination where you will arrive late, you put dinner in the crock pot, set the crock pot in the sink to secure it and it cooks on the road so you have a hot dinner ready when you arrive. Seems like a good plan.

The crock pot would draw 850 - 1,000 watts, but I like to have excess capacity. And I'll be able to locate the inverter close to the battery bay.

If the big wattage inverter is at a low price or even free, grab it. The number of batteries and how fat the wiring and fuse size has to be depends on what you are actually running with the inverter; not on what the inverter "could do."

Also, I find with my 3000w MSW inverter that it has no more additional draw on the batts running low watt appliances than a lower watt inverter does. There isn't much if anything to be saved there by getting a smaller inverter to run smaller things.

AFAIK from much time on this forum, the high stand-by draws of high wattage inverters are actually being quoted for inverter/chargers, with their huge batch of electronics to run their remotes and a zillion settable features. You see 2.3 amps or whatever. My 3000w inverter has a no -load standby amps draw of 0.5 amps.

It also has a remote on/off switch, that I use so when I am not inverting anything, I turn it off. Why leave it in standby? (Watch the TV set though. If you invert to run your laptop, the TV will be on in standby eating extra amps. Unplug the TV.

In actual use, the 3000w inverter draws fewer DC amps to run a CFL reading lamp than a 150w inverter does. Turns out that is because the 150w inverter is plugged into the Winegard 12v socket with long thin wires to the batteries, while the 3000w inverter is close to the batteries on fat wires.

In other words, "It depends!"

Hi,

Use #12 wire (or #10) from the inverter to the outlet you wish to install. Look for a 20 amp outlet at Home Depot.

2000/4000 means running and surge.

Tal/IL wrote:

I had an opportunity to pick up a 2000/4000 watt inverter, which would easily meet my needs.

It probably would FAR exceed your needs and might not be a good idea.

The entire capacity of a 15 amp 110 V circuit is only about 1700 watts.
The bigger the inverter, the higher the operating losses are too.
If you ever got near 2000 watts, it would pull about 166 amps from the batteries and needs a VERY heavy gauge wire to support that. And would make your batteries low in short order.

What does 2000/4000 mean ?
What do you want to be able to run from this outlet ??

No problem. It's still 12v - but those instructions are confusing for sure.

You are good to go. Mine are wired up he same way.