12 volt batteries, solar panel and inverter.

Hi,

Cheapest route for you is to upgrade to a hybrid inverter/charger. I would add some more solar charging.

A generator or huge battery bank & inverter just to heat the occasional can of soup?

Suggestion: Propane Stove.

Thanks everyone for your input. Really appreciate the knowledge that is out there on this form. I have decided to rethink my situation and will probably go with a 3000 watt Gen in the back of my truck.
Once again thanks for all the input.
Grandpa.

I have a E-Meter on my motorhome, and it carefully measures all the power going into and out of the battery bank. This is a $375 accurate meter. It shows that my CO meter, propane detector, and refrigerator combine to consume 35 amp hours daily. This is about what one of my 120 watt solar panels puts out every day.

They are rated at 21 volts and max 7 amps. take the 7 amp output, and multiply by 5 "Peak hours". That is all you get. The panels are in the sun all day, and part of the morning it is less than 5 amps per hour, noon it is near 7 amps per hour, afternoon it is less than 5 amps again, so "rule of thumb" is to take the rated amps X 5 hours.

You can buy larger solar panels for about $1 per rated watt. SunElec.com

As for running the microwave from a inverter, I do not recommend it. I ran mine for about 15 minutes, and had to replace it because it cooks so slowly now. And I have a $750 Trace 1,500 watt inverter/charger, that is wired with #000 wire, and my 4 golf cart batteries can put out 150 amps while it was running. Unless you have so many batteries, and such large wire, it will not work, and investing all that money to just find out that your microwave now cooks really slowly too - well learn from my mistake.

Good luck,

Fred.

We do not have a microwave and about half of our camping is off grid. We do have a 185W high voltage solar panel which meets our needs including for our Waeco 12V refrigerator.
There is one alternative and that is to use the output from the tow vehicle alternator. I have a set of jumper cables that can be run between the TV and battery. The Subaru alternator is rated at 110 amps and it uses .35 gal per hour.
I have a 30A DPDT switch that cuts the converter when the inverter is on and powering the outlets.

SteveAE wrote:
Grandpa,

IF you want to run your microwave from your batteries and recharge them via solar, then you will likely need:
- Four batteries
- A 1200 Watt (or bigger) inverter
- Short and large (diameter) cables between the inverter and the batteries
- And a 200 to 300 watt (minimum) solar system (and plan to use power conservatively at that)
This type of system works well ..... for me. But you best verify that this is really what you want before jumping in as it isn't cheap to do.

Steve

This is the best answer so far IMHO. You'll definitely need to go with an inverter with about 150% of the MW's steady state draw to pull this off. Perhaps a better option for you would be a small generator to recharge your batteries each morning.

Beemer. You are right. I had to go take a look. The input is 1.5 KW or 1500 watt. my inverter is only 1000 watt with a 2000 overload. I would suggest my gray matter is not working to good.
Thanks for the thumbs up.
My little Honda 750 isn't any help to me here either.
I down graded from a 23 ft Motor home to a 20ft tow behind this last fall as we don't do all that much camping anymore but like to get out when we feel like it. My motor home had a 4000 watt power plant in it so the wife kind of got use to using the micro wave when ever she wanted. May have to change plans now on the inverter seeing that my solar and power supply wont be adequate to do the job. Thanks

Grandpa,

IF you want to run your microwave from your batteries and recharge them via solar, then you will likely need:
- Four batteries
- A 1200 Watt (or bigger) inverter
- Short and large (diameter) cables between the inverter and the batteries
- And a 200 to 300 watt (minimum) solar system (and plan to use power conservatively at that)
This type of system works well ..... for me. But you best verify that this is really what you want before jumping in as it isn't cheap to do.

Steve

grandpa123 wrote:
Beemer! My micro wave is only a tiny 700 watt. Wife usually warms things up in it at lunch time such as a bowl of soup or such once or twice a day at most.

I recommend a 1500 watt Go Power sine wave inverter.
You really should have 3+ batteries to drive it.

Just power the single microwave circuit with a small transfer switch. Going through the converter will just drain the battery. Lights and such will operate directly off the battery as they do now.

I recommend 100 watts solar as a minimum for the effort.

On edit: make that four batteries, 2000w inverter and 200w solar.

grandpa123 wrote:
Beemer! My micro wave is only a tiny 700 watt. Wife usually warms things up in it at lunch time such as a bowl of soup or such once or twice a day at most.

That is probably power output, how many watts does it draw when operating?