I apologize if this issue has been addressed in an earlier thread.The RV park I'm staying at experienced a loss of power tonight. When I purchased my fifth wheel, I was told when shore side power goes out, my inverter will use the charged batteries to generate electricity. I still have lights, fridge, heater and my radio/dvd/aux system working, but nothing that plugs into an outlet. I tried to reset the gfci and the rest button will not stay in. I was reading something that suggested not all circuits are wired into the converter batteries. Is it possible that NONE of my outlets are backed up by the 4 batteries connected to my inverter?

Well, lets try to understand a few things.An INverter turns 12V DC into 120V AC, thats for things like your outlets, AC etc.A Converter turns 120V into 12VDC to charge your batteries and run things like your 12V lights, furnace etc.All trailers come with a converter.Some trailers come with a inverter. Are you sure yours has an inverter? And if it does, for it to automatically switch over when you loose AC power you als need what is called a "transfer switch". Otherwise you need to turn on the inverter manually.There is a high likelyhood that your trailer doesn't have an inverter so when you loose power anything that runs off 120V won't work. Things like the AC, TV (sometimes) microwave,And without power your batteries will run the 12V appliances for while, until the batteries get low.

What is the inverter model number?Inverter will generally have a power switch somewhere.But I think you may have misunderstood the sales talk.

Hi,You probably only have one circuit that is powered by the inverter. Try the receptacles closest to the TV plug in. Also the inverter sucks the battery dry fairly quickly, so normally it is left off until you need to run it, so you will have to manually turn on the inverter someplace. You might have a remote control, or might need to get into one of the storage compartments to turn it on there. The inverter when left on, and you are not using any power will use about 1 amp hour per hour. Even when powering a 20 watt laptop, the inverter is not 100% efficient, and likely will use the same 12 watts as when not powering anything and an additional 24 watts to provide the 20 watts to the computer. So effectively, you will be using 3 amps per hour from your battery to power a 20 watt load, via the inverter. Your battery should hande the load OK, because it is only a 3 amp load for about 3-4 hours, or less than 15 amp hours. Your battery total is probably 200 AH for a pair of batteries, and 400 amp hours if you have 4 batteries. The lights will consume another 1.1 amps per hour they are on, while the furnace will be around 6-8 amp per hour. When the power is restored, the converter will recharge the batteries in a couple of hours. If not then driving will top them off in about 5-7 hours.So remember that most of your RV receptacles are not inverter powered, only a couple of them. Best to mark them now. Use a radio or small wattage portable lamp to quickly find the working lights.Fred.

I have a Xantrex PRO Inverter XM 1000I've read through as much of the manual as I can understand. It appears that if not connected to shore side, this inverter should take battery power to operate gfci outlets to which it is suited. The inverter itself had a gfci outlet built in as well

Golden_HVAC wrote:Hi,You probably only have one circuit that is powered by the inverter. Try the receptacles closest to the TV plug in. Also the inverter sucks the battery dry fairly quickly, so normally it is left off until you need to run it, so you will have to manually turn on the inverter someplace. You might have a remote control, or might need to get into one of the storage compartments to turn it on there. The inverter when left on, and you are not using any power will use about 1 amp hour per hour. Even when powering a 20 watt laptop, the inverter is not 100% efficient, and likely will use the same 12 watts as when not powering anything and an additional 24 watts to provide the 20 watts to the computer. So effectively, you will be using 3 amps per hour from your battery to power a 20 watt load, via the inverter. Your battery should hande the load OK, because it is only a 3 amp load for about 3-4 hours, or less than 15 amp hours. Your battery total is probably 200 AH for a pair of batteries, and 400 amp hours if you have 4 batteries. The lights will consume another 1.1 amps per hour they are on, while the furnace will be around 6-8 amp per hour. When the power is restored, the converter will recharge the batteries in a couple of hours. If not then driving will top them off in about 5-7 hours.So remember that most of your RV receptacles are not inverter powered, only a couple of them. Best to mark them now. Use a radio or small wattage portable lamp to quickly find the working lights.Fred.Thanks, Fred. I checked each outlet while the power was out and none worked. I'm not sure what my entertainment center is plugged into, but it remained on while my TV, microwave and anything plugged in went off. The fridge stayed on though. The guy that gave me the orientation walk through mentioned flipping a switch to keep the fridge running when I unplug from the campsite, but I see only one switch that turns power to the inverter off completely marked "House" with a picture of a battery on it.

Switching to inverter power during power outage

wa8yxm
Explorer III
Dec 09, 2013
Yup I do it here in a few cases.. I was once parked next to a wind farm (Well, about a mile away) but the voltage was way off.. I did not have an auto-former then (it was low) so I tripped the breaker feeding my Xantrex, forcing it to inverter mode. and left the Progressive Dymamics 9180 on, The microwave was quite happy as were the other electronics.

Basically folks that is a home made double conversion power line fixer.
christopherglen
Explorer
Dec 09, 2013
That's called double conversion, I am running double conversion UPS's on my servers at work. Not the most efficient, but all the utility is powering is a battery charger - the inverter keeps the high priced electronics happy.
wa8yxm
Explorer III
Dec 04, 2013
Converter powers 12 volt stuff when you are connected to shore or generator power, It also charges batteries. On the fuse/breaker box door is a model number, Please post it so we can rate your converter.

INVERTER takes power from the batteries and uses it to power it's loads.

IF I were designing a house system I might well decide to have the electronics powered full time by the inverter and put in a converter large enough to provide power to that as well.. (There is a reason for this) Years ago I visited an electronics store and they had what was called a power conditioner, You could put a truly scarey waveform into it, vary the voltage all over the place, Nasty spikes, Square waves, whatever you wanted to do, and what came out was some of the sweetest looking sine waves I ever saw on a scope display.

The unit had 3 major components

Converter----Battery---True Sine wave Inverter.

And that is the system I just described where the house inverter always provides TV power.
whiteysax
Explorer
Dec 04, 2013
Quite possible since it's the only appliance the guy at the lot mentioned when going over the inverter. Hopefully I'll get to the task of following wires tomorrow. Went to set up at my new spot this evening and half of my 2nd front slide isn't working so I can't open that slide. So my #1 priority tomorrow is getting that slide out. Gonna try customer service.
TheAmRheins
Explorer
Dec 03, 2013
I am betting that inverter is dedicated to the residential refrigerator.
whiteysax
Explorer
Dec 03, 2013
Bill.Satellite wrote:
Nearly all inverters have an on/off option. Do you know if your inverter is on? Is there a wall mounted controller that allows you to set/change options?

There is a power switch on the unit as well as a knob mounted behind the unit connected by a cable which, when turned, kills the power to the inverter. It's definitely on now. The display shows the current voltage reading and says 13.1 V
There is no separate controller, however.
I set up at my new "home" tomorrow when I get to Atlanta so I'll probably take the day to settle in and start tracing as many wires as I can on Wednesday.
Bill_Satellite
Explorer II
Dec 02, 2013
Nearly all inverters have an on/off option. Do you know if your inverter is on? Is there a wall mounted controller that allows you to set/change options?
christopherglen
Explorer
Dec 02, 2013
It is possible that inverter only runs the fridge.
pianotuna
Nomad III
Dec 01, 2013
Hi whiteysax,

Follow the shore power cord.
whiteysax
Explorer
Dec 01, 2013
I have no generator. Just shore power,a converter and an inverter. If I understood the walk through, there should be a transfer switch,I just haven't found it yet. I'm gonna thoroughly follow everything one I relocate and set up in Atlanta. Maybe I'll be able to post some pics for y'all to check out to make sure I'm seeing everything correctly
Again... thanks for all the advice!

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