Recommend a DC current clamp meter
Hello. I want to purchase an inexpensive clamp meter for DC current to do occasional checks on the battery charging/discharging status. I was surfing Amazon and happily putting items in my Wish Li...
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Ahh j-d, now I recall how we've "met" with the comment on the nice
guy who provided a start cap for your air con! I'm still 100% boondocking and only needed our air con once last summer. The Yamaha gen ran it OK, it did fault out once during that afternoon.
This whole search for a DC amp meter has just been out of curiosity of what my PSW inverters draw, both at idle and while running various loads. In summer when the solar is humming along I don't really care about leaving them on full time. But when parked next to my house in the winter my panels don't do much due to shadows from trees, snow accumulation, low sun angle, and short days. I find that I have to plug into shore power every so often for a few days to get things nice and topped off, especially since I've been running our outdoor Christmas lights off the inverter. The lights are on a timer but the inverter still stays on full time. Even though the Christmas lights are all LEDs and I'm only pulling about 15 watts (AC) according to the Kill-A-Watt, I'm finding that my battery voltage will drop from full to 12.2V in only 3 or 4 days. My first thought was to swap over from the 1500 watt inverter to the 300 watt inverter; my thinking was the smaller inverter will be more efficient at supplying this small load. But I didn't notice much difference. So I plug the TT in after the battery voltage gets down to the low 12's and let the WFCO converter charge away for a couple days to top the batteries off. So much for my solar-powered Christmas lights idea, if only I could trim the neighbor's trees down 10' or so...
guy who provided a start cap for your air con! I'm still 100% boondocking and only needed our air con once last summer. The Yamaha gen ran it OK, it did fault out once during that afternoon.
This whole search for a DC amp meter has just been out of curiosity of what my PSW inverters draw, both at idle and while running various loads. In summer when the solar is humming along I don't really care about leaving them on full time. But when parked next to my house in the winter my panels don't do much due to shadows from trees, snow accumulation, low sun angle, and short days. I find that I have to plug into shore power every so often for a few days to get things nice and topped off, especially since I've been running our outdoor Christmas lights off the inverter. The lights are on a timer but the inverter still stays on full time. Even though the Christmas lights are all LEDs and I'm only pulling about 15 watts (AC) according to the Kill-A-Watt, I'm finding that my battery voltage will drop from full to 12.2V in only 3 or 4 days. My first thought was to swap over from the 1500 watt inverter to the 300 watt inverter; my thinking was the smaller inverter will be more efficient at supplying this small load. But I didn't notice much difference. So I plug the TT in after the battery voltage gets down to the low 12's and let the WFCO converter charge away for a couple days to top the batteries off. So much for my solar-powered Christmas lights idea, if only I could trim the neighbor's trees down 10' or so...
