Switching to inverter power during power outage

[whiteysax]

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?

[wa8yxm]

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]

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]

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]

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]

I am betting that inverter is dedicated to the residential refrigerator.

[whiteysax]

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]

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]

It is possible that inverter only runs the fridge.

[pianotuna]

Hi whiteysax,

Follow the shore power cord.

[whiteysax]

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!

[john_bet]

Something I did not see mentioned is that you may or may not have a transfer sw. after the inverter to a certain circuit.

[BFL13]

whiteysax wrote:
I did some looking around and found my converter. It is mounted right behind the fuse box. The inverter is on the opposite side connected to a chain of batteries. Am I correct to assume what I experienced during the power outage was the converter powering the 12v utilities? In that case, why wouldn't my inverter power anything? It's pretty tough to follow the wires from the inverter as they eventually run inside the undercarriage.
My fridge is residential and has no LP hookup.

No, your converter only works with 120v input. You were on battery getting 12v with no 120v input from shore power or gen.

Your inverter will supply 120v with input from the 12v battery bank at the same time the batteries are supplying 12v to the rest of the rig.

Now we know why the fridge is on the inverter--it is 120v only. This will shorten the time you can run anything on inverter since now the fridge will eat into your television time allowed before the batteries need a recharge (which needs 120v--that's what the generator is for if no shore power)

The inverter lets you do things when generator is not allowed like in early morning, then once gen time is allowed later in the day, you can now recharge the batts that got low from using the inverter.

With an inverter, you don't have to be one of those awful campers who run their gens in the evening to watch TV. 😞

[dddire]

whiteysax wrote:
I did some looking around and found my converter. It is mounted right behind the fuse box. The inverter is on the opposite side connected to a chain of batteries. Am I correct to assume what I experienced during the power outage was the converter powering the 12v utilities? In that case, why wouldn't my inverter power anything? It's pretty tough to follow the wires from the inverter as they eventually run inside the undercarriage.
My fridge is residential and has no LP hookup.

I would say with 99% certainty, you're 12v utilities are powered directly by 12v.

Not sure what you're inverter is powering. Like suggested, look for additional wires from the inverter and figure out where they go.

[whiteysax]

I did some looking around and found my converter. It is mounted right behind the fuse box. The inverter is on the opposite side connected to a chain of batteries. Am I correct to assume what I experienced during the power outage was the converter powering the 12v utilities? In that case, why wouldn't my inverter power anything? It's pretty tough to follow the wires from the inverter as they eventually run inside the undercarriage.
My fridge is residential and has no LP hookup.