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?

[whiteysax]

I have a Xantrex PRO Inverter XM 1000

I'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]

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.

[time2roll]

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

[ktmrfs]

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.