Easy & Cheap way to determine battery draw

Hi,

Although the kill-a-watt only measures AC, you can "cheat" and use it to measure DC by disconnecting the battery and powering the RV directly from the converter.

If you know the power factor of the converter (Progressive Dynamics is 0.7) you can change the watts into DC amps by dividing by 12 (or 13.6) depending on the converter output.

Don't do this with one of the older converters that requires a battery for stabilizing the DC voltage.

The easiest and cheapest is a voltmeter. Ammeters are a bit more expensive and trouble. However, a voltmeter will take a bit of experience to use.

Knowing how many amps you're drawing is not always real helpful, but knowing where the battery volts are is.

Of course you can always do the A= W/V calc on most anything and get a good ballpark.

I wish more things were cheap and easy :R
DC clamp on ammeter is easy and lower price than a full battery monitor.
For cheap search the forum or ebay for a digital ammeter to wire in.
I use a Blue Sea analog 50-0-50 ammeter. Not really cheap or easy ;)

I put a digital ammeter in the negative lead of the battery. It required installing a shunt between the battery negative lead and ground. It was cheap, the meter was about $10 on eBay and a little wire was required. Was it easy, well, it wasn't difficult but it took a bit of time.

Kill-A-Watt is only good for 120 volta AC.
An old style amp meter is series with the load will work on 12 volts.
There is newer models that utilizes a shunt into a digital meter.

Start with a Kill O Watt meter. Measures current, Watts,voltage. Etc.
amazon or EBay.