Some appliances demand a power surge on startup. What’s the highest power draw of your appliances? The inverter needs to be powerful enough to run the AC components connected to it at any given time.īy minimizing what you have running simultaneously, you can reduce the size of the inverter you need.įor example, brewing your cup of joe before charging your laptop will need a smaller inverter than if you do both simultaneously. Instead, you need to understand a few things about your appliances and how you’ll use them: What AC appliances will you run at the same time? In reality, there isn’t a one size fits all answer. If you read any of the campervan conversion forums, you’ll likely see posts and conflicting opinions on what size inverter you need in a camper. Water pumps, camera batteries, and laptop chargers will probably run fine, but other appliances like LED TVs or digital clocks won’t work. Update: square wave inverters are almost impossible to buy now, so modified sine wave inverters are the cheapest available in today’s market.Ī modified sine wave inverter can run simple appliances without sensitive electronics. Modified sine wave inverters are more expensive, with component parts more complex than a square wave model, but they are widely available. The power inverter then reduces the voltage in similar incremental steps until it reaches the opposite polarity. Rather than instantly flipping between the positive and negative voltage, it produces a smoother waveform, though still a little clunky.įollowing the general shape of a pure sine waveform, the voltage increases in increments with tiny pauses in between until it reaches the AC voltage level. Instead, you can use an inverter to convert the battery bank’s stored DC power to AC so you can go ahead and run your household appliances.Īlso read: 8 Best Camping Coffee Makers for 2022Ī modified sine wave inverter produces a stepped wave. You could fire up your RV’s generator because it produces AC power, but that can be noisy and a little overkill if you don’t need to use your household appliances often. But your household appliances won’t run on DC. When a mains supply isn’t available, just like when you’re boondocking and the camper isn’t hooked up to shore power, you only have your battery bank as a power source, which provides DC power. You can wire your DC appliances to the battery, and they’ll run happily – things like LED lights, a 12v fridge, USB sockets, and ventilation fans.Īppliances usually plugged into a household power outlet need an AC power source.Īppliances like microwaves, laptop chargers, coffee makers, or regular TVs won’t run directly from the battery bank. But why would you need to?Īlternating current (AC) cannot be stored, but direct current (DC) can, and we use our camper’s leisure batteries to store it. In the most simple terms, an inverter transforms DC power into AC power.
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