Couple of Inverter Questions

pianotuna wrote:
Hi,

Sounds as if it may be a MSW (modified sine wave) inverter. Hence the circuit for powering the led lights on the octopus cord don't work.

For the small stuff get a 300 watt PSW inverter. DO NOT ATTEMPT TO USE THE MSW INVERTER WITH APPLE PRODUCTS.

If you have a battery charger, I would drag it along and use it in conjunction with the converter to reduce generator run time for battery charging.

Have a great time at the races.

Thanks! It is a cheap MSW inverter. I do have a battery charger but I didn't bring it. We had a great time. This is our 4th time out and the weather got worse each year, culminating with a microburst last year that nearly toppled the camper and sent sheets of sideways rain shooting through every vent and crevice on the rig. But - this weekend was near perfect. We had a little rain early Saturday morning and that was it.

Anyhow, back to the subject at hand. I ran the fridge on propane all 3 days. I couldn't get the ignitor to stop igniting at first. After a few hours of click click clicking, the wire started to melt. I repositioned the probe and tightened a loose connection and it was fine. So that removed a big part of the electric equation.

time2roll made a comment about a 300 watt inverter. I forgot I had one - I found it in a cabinet just before we left. It powered the boom box, phone chargers, satellite receiver and TV - *almost* all at once. I got an over-voltage alarm when I first fired up the TV but it didn't shut off. Removing the boom box made it happy again.

I ran everything off that little inverter - never got the big one out. On the 2nd day the girls needed to run hair dryers and whatnot so I fired up the generator. The batteries had only gotten down to 3/4 and that put them back up to 100%. And this is obviously after use beyond just the inverter like lights (I've gone 100% LED), water pump, bathroom fans, etc. When I left yesterday they were 3/4 again. I fired up the generator anyway because I wanted to run the rooftop A/C on the way home.

So long story short, there's a decent amount of electrical capacity when being sensible about what I'm using it for. I guess using the fridge on 120V was never a realistic option with my setup, and I'm glad I didn't try.

Thanks all!