dahkota wrote:
Our use of multiple inverters has nothing to do with the inverter load itself and everything to do with all the stuff plugged into them.
We boondock and dry camp a lot. We have and use three inverters - a house inverter, a smaller inverter for the bedroom, and an even smaller inverter for the outside tv, front of the house, or outside lights.
Because we rely on solar and know that some days the sun just doesn't come out long enough or strong enough to make up for our usage, we pay attention to how much power things use. Since we never use two of the tvs during the day, it makes no sense for them to be powered all day; yes, the satellite receiver and tv use power on standby. And, rather than having to unplug stuff all the time to reduce our usage, we just use different inverters depending on what we are using. All it takes is a push of the button - much faster than unplugging everything we don't need to use.
Our house inverter, with everything plugged into it, uses 2A an hour with nothing 'on,' which would be 4A per hour if we plugged the other stuff back in to it rather than the other inverters. We 'save' 24AH per day with little effort, or about 50 minutes of sunlight. Right now, in mid latitudes during the winter, that equals a second pot of coffee, 4 extra hours of lights, and 3 degrees on our furnace.
There ARE inverters like my Tripplite that have a load sense feature.
This inverter can sense if there is a AC load or demand and turn on/off with that demand. I have mine set to turn on with a 9W AC load, load drops to zero the inverter turns off the 120V output and the standby current of the inverter drops to well under 1 ma at 12V.. No need for a remote switch (but does have the option for one) to "save" battery capacity..
This way I only need ONE inverter for my entire trailer..
Saves money in battery/solar/gen usage, saves money in buying extra inverters, saves money in extra high cost heavy wiring.
