Special Guests: Gone with the Wynns – Inverters 101

Hi William. That all sounds totally do-able... and should be safe as long as you wire everything carefully, etc. The only trouble we could envision would be if the bunk house area is in a slide, which would make running wiring more complicated. Barring that, we have only a couple of thoughts...

If you go the inverter route, you likely wouldn't need a very large one. You'd just need to add up the power usage of all the devices you'd want it to run. So if the TV was 300W (no idea if that's reasonable, just throwing a number out), the XBOX was 100W, and the phone charger is 10W, you'd need something capable of supporting a 410W load. You'd need to account for any "surge" the devices have on start-up... so likely a 1,000W inverter would be PLENTY! For those devices, the extra money for a pure-sine inverter would be good. Electronics generally work OK on modified sine power from less-expensive inverters, but it causes their power supplies to run hotter, which can shorten their life. You could consider getting an RV-specific, 12V TV... and installing a 12V outlet that could power a USB-charger for the phone. But that would still leave the XBox needing power. With the 12V outlet, you could consider a small, portable inverter to power just the XBox, with the rest running off 12V directly... which would be more power efficient than inverting the power from 12V to 120V and then having the devices' inboard power adapters ramping it back down. Consider what your battery capacity is. Travel trailers usually have smaller battery banks, so the usable power available isn't that great. Even a small inverter could drain your battery bank pretty quickly if it's not large enough.

Hope this all helps!

Hi David! We did indeed help the Wynns with getting their AC temporarily wired to their inverter so they could do their test of running it from their lithium batteries. But the reason we didn't include details on how we did it was threefold: (1) we aren't electricians and don't want to risk giving bad information on a topic that could have dire results if improperly done, (2) the way we did it for Nikki and Jason was totally temporary, and not likely something that someone would want to do as a permanent solution, and (3) every RV is wired differently, and Nikki & Jason's just happened to have a configuration that made it easy to rig something up temporarily... but it's not likely that many other RVs would be similar. We'd suggest that if you're on Facebook, you may want to check out the Solar Powered RVs & Boondocking group, as there is likely someone there who has attempted to do what you're looking to do and could give more direct input on how to proceed safely. Sorry we can't be of more help... but let us know if you find a solution that works!

This topic can be hard to understand for a lot of people. but getting into the RV life you will find you learn these things quickly. But to simplify the whole thing.

Each AC Appliance (which are things that plug into a normal home style electrical socket) Require a certain amount of power. Makes sense right? Once you find out what each device requires its just a matter of math to find out what kind of inverter you require. I myself have done a blog post on this topic, trying to type it out as simply as possible. It can still get confusing.

When it comes to Mod Sine wave vs Pure Sine Wave options. What I tell people that have problems understanding that Mod is Dirty Power, while Pure is Clean power. Pure is what you will see from a standard home power outlet from the grid. Some things just won't work on Mod Sine, or work allot harder. Like a house fan for example. On a Mod Sine, it might make a buzzing sound while running, and work allot harder and its life span would be cut in half. A Microwave in another example might take twice as long to warm up a cup of water then it would plugged into grid power or a pure sine wave inverter.

I know even put as simply as possible can still be confusing. So I find it just easy to say Mod Sine is dirty, and would just not use in long term use applications. If you plan to use long term. Go Pure Sine even if its allot money, and ignore anyone that tells you otherwise that Mod Sines are just as good, ok for long term use and cheaper. Hell, my heating blanket wont even turn on with a Mod Sine Inverter, but will on my pure sine inverter. Its just a basic heating blanket with no advance parts and it will not accept Mod Sine wave power. Some might, but mine sure as hell wont. lol

But i wont rant anymore and confuse you anymore. I am sorry. :-)