high quality autoformer

Not to be confused with a voltage booster.

Hi Drew,

It could be used to balance the two legs of a 50 amp RV allowing more power to be drawn.

If load imbalance is to be expected, a lower power 240V inverter with autotransformer will therefore be preferable to a stacked inverter solution.

Thanks for pointing out that this is not the same type of autoformer as a Hughes, Sola Basic or Triplite unit.

Of what use would that particular unit be to an RVer? It's not an automatic voltage regulator of any sort. It's just a center tapped autotransformer intended to "create" a neutral on a straight 240V circuit (or, more precisely, make a single 240V circuit into a split-phase circuit), or to convert 120V to 240V or vice-versa. It does look to be a good quality unit.

Autotransformers are not exactly rare electrical components; they're simply a transformer where the input and output are taken from (portions) of the same coil, rather than having separate windings for each. That allows for the use of less copper in the windings but obviously doesn't provide any galvanic isolation between the two sides.

I suppose it might be handy if you're using a 50A American RV in Europe or Australia for connecting up to local electric power.