Got a Vanner Equalizer. What now?

[Scott & Heather]

I have scoured the search items on the board about this, and there's some wonderful bits and pieces of info, but I just need a simple baby talk explanation of what to do with my Vanner. Was just given a 60-50 equalizer today and want to install it in my coach. I know it keeps the batteries charge/draw equal, but how does it relate to me hooking up an inverter to power my coach's 110 system? In other words, is this how I do it:

1. Install Vanner exactly according to directions (connecting wires in order being sure to connect ground last...or first. Can't remember)

2. Install a 5000 watt inverter onto 12 volt source from Vanner?

3. Connect my coach 110 breaker panel to inverter?

4. Viola, I have enough juice to power coach whilst on the road?

This isn't for sensitive electronics, but the roof air, lights, etc. So not going to spend the $$$ on pure sine wave yet.

[hargreaves]

A 60 amp vanner will not power a 5000 watt inverter . You need 12 volt house batteries for the inverter and hook the vanner up so when you start the bus a relay will energize and put the 50 amps into the batteries. It will not be enough to run the air conditioners while driving down the road.       Gerry

[Jeremy]

Yes, if the question is how to connect a large 12v inverter to the 24v chassis batteries, that's probably not the right approach to take. Unless perhaps you are 100% confident that you'll only ever be running the inverter when the engine is also running - but in that case the proper answer would probably be to start by getting a 24v inverter instead.

Jeremy

[Scott & Heather]

Interesting. I knew I didn't know anything about this. Gerry, 50 amps isn't enough for my a/c's? I run them now on 50 amp...or am I confused about 50amp from the inverter

Jeremy, yes our plan is to use the inverter only when driving down the road, but I think I'll message you to get some more info on this. Sounds like I'm approaching it wrong...

[Busted Knuckle]

Interesting. I knew I didn't know anything about this. Gerry, 50 amps isn't enough for my a/c's? I run them now on 50 amp...or am I confused about 50amp from the inverter

Jeremy, yes our plan is to use the inverter only when driving down the road, but I think I'll message you to get some more info on this. Sounds like I'm approaching it wrong...

Scott the 50A vanner will not be near big enough to supply an inverter that large.
I'm not an electrical guru so I'll leave that up to one of them to explain.
  BK 

[Len Silva]

Scott,

A 5000 watt inverter fully loaded is going to pull well over 400 amps at 12 volts, not something you can do with any equalizer.

As simple rule of thumb is to multiply the 120 volt amps by 10 to get the 12 volt amps.  Or, divide the watts by the volts to get the amps.

Thus a 1500 watt air conditioner will be 12.5 amps at 120 volts but 125 amps from the battery at 12 volts. The add another 10-15% for inverter losses and other factors.

[Scott & Heather]

Got it...so, is there no way to run my fridge and 1 rooftop a/c off the coach alternator/generator?

[Jriddle]

I installed a 100 Amp Vanner and was trying to run 12v loads such as refrigerator and lights I found the the vanner would go into fault. I ended up putting a 12 volt battery between the vanner and the 12 volt loads all has work well since.


John

[Scott & Heather]

Something I will definitely do...the battery as a buffer seems to be a great idea.

[Scott & Heather]

Ok, so if I ran a 24 volt inverter off the batteries, I would get a max of 2400 watts? Any way to get more? I would think the alternator/generator of the coach without the load of the original coach climate control would provide enough power for at least 30 amp service???

[Jeremy]

The limiting factor in the original scenario was the Vanner - do away with this (ie, switch to a 24v inverter) and the world's your oyster. I've no idea how much juice the OEM alternator on your bus can produce - I expect the answer is 'plenty', but someone else will have more knowledge about that.

But be very careful about flattening the batteries by having the inverter turned-on when the engine isn't running. Detroits are quite hard to hand-crank I believe.

Jeremy

[Seayfam]

I have my bus set up with 24v inverters. I have two 8d start batteries and two house batteries. My front AC is switched to either run off of the inverter or shore power. When going down the road, I switch it over to the inverter and go. Never have a problem with everything keeping up.


Sent from my GT-I9100 using Xparent Green Tapatalk

[bevans6]

I highly recommend (particularly for refrigerators and roof-top AC's) a pure sine inverter.  "Sensitive electronics" almost always have an internal power supply that could care less about input power, it converts it back to DC and into a switching power supply anyway - what really needs clean power are the motors in your Fridge and air conditioner, so they drive the need for the pure sine.  A pure sine will be a lot more efficient running those as well, saving battery power.

I highly recommend a 24 volt inverter for your application - half the DC current means smaller wiring, less fuss and muss.  I have a 3000 watt pure sine Samlex inverter to run my roof air from my alternator while driving, it works great.

Brian

[hargreaves]

Scott I am running the stock 24V alternator, around 270amps I believe. I have a 100 amp Vanner. When I start the bus it switches a 150 amp relay allowing the 100amps of 12volts to go to my 8 golf cart batteries. When cruising down the road, I can run 1 AC unit and the fridge. The fridge does not run all the time so the vanner will keep up with the AC load.  Keeping in mind I have lots of house batteries.  I am using a SW2412 Xantrex. If the load is to much or the batteries loose too much chargre  the gen automatically starts to charge the batteries.  This seems to work fine.

Gerry

[Jeremy]

One of the problems with the pure-sine vs modified-sine choice is that there's no definition of how 'good' the modified-sine output may be.

I've pulled these two charts off the internet at random; both show modified-sine waves, but the bottom one is clearly going to be much nicer to your motors than the top one.






But, short of hooking it up an an oscilloscope, I'm not sure how you can know how good or bad the output of any given modified-sine inverter might be. In fact, with the possible exception of a small handful of makes, inverters are probably right at the top of my "Don't believe anything that's written on the box" list.

Jeremy