Power inverter

[DubLloyd]

Starting on my electrical system on my 3751. Please advise as to a quality inverter and what size may be the best as for my needs. Upon completion, my Silverside will just be for weekend use at racing events. 3 day max usage. Generator during the day, and inverter during the night. Night usage would be for lighting, television/Direct TV, and fridg. Also please advise as to just how much battery storage that I may need. AC would be a mini split and powered by quiet generator when needed.

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[TomC]

Magnum 2500 pure sine wave inverter/charger. Magnum makes a 2800 watt load sharing-meaning if you're hooked up to the power pole, it will give you you more power from the batteries if you exceed the power pole output. But it sounds like you're going to be dry camping a lot, so you don't need to pay for the extra cost of the load sharing.
I only use my inverter for short term use appliances-microwave, all plugs, bathroom wall heater, 10 gal water heater. I do not power the washer/dryer, air conditioning, (refrigerator and freezer are 120/12v automatically) since these are high wattage use and run for long time-just run your generator. Hopefully you have a good 1800rpm Diesel generator.

[buswarrior]

TomC x2

In all these years of watching busnuts waste money trying to be cheap...Buy the good inverter charger first and sit back and enjoy it's functionality.

And proudly purchase one of the better SOC meters, State of Charge meters, so you can "see" how much power is going in and out. One that matches up with your inverter charger has advantages in simplicity and one stop shopping. Not every bunut is interested in the research and knowledge necessary to brew up a custom system.

You have to do some load measuring to arrive at an appropriate battery bank size. Remembering that keeping the consumer confused is in the interest of many of these vendors... you will need to teach yourself the different units of measure, and pick one to get all your numbers to add up correctly. hint hint Amp-hours is the common battery capacity measurement

A Kill-o-Watt meter off Amazon is a fabulous tool for every busnut to have, who plans to run off a battery bank. Plug your house refrigerator into it, and start gathering interesting data as to the power it consumes over time.

Beware of busnuts, their journey is often the destination...You don't want to be screwing around with a dysfunctional coach at the races, with guests and neighbours finding your antics both irritating and amusing at the same time! The system is there to serve you, not the other way around. Turn the key, throw a switch, pour a beverage.

At the races, your power consumption will likely be a lot higher than the busnut who says their prayers and goes to bed at sundown, doesn't open the fridge door all night and uses the lights for the 62 seconds necessary to find the outhouse...

As a starting place, 4 x 6 volt golf cart batteries will handily do the busnut described above. I suspect that your use might be a little close for 4?
One thing you can do to economize, is start with 4, design your battery area to accept adding more batteries, and try it out?

And what voltage are you going to use? 12 or 24?

happy coaching!
buswarrior

[Iceni John]

Magnum inverters are good quality, made in USA, and serviceable.   Not cheap, but quality never is.

For battery monitors, you may want to consider the Smartgauge.   Instead of calculating amps in and amps out like other monitors, it uses a self-correcting algorithm that constantly adjusts for Peukert and other variables, making it more accurate and dependable even when the batteries age.   They're now being imported by Balmar:  http://www.pbase.com/mainecruising/smart_gauge   The Smartgauge website is very informative, and also has useful information about battery wiring and other matters:  http://www.smartgauge.co.uk/sgvahrs.html

John

[TomC]

I bought my Trace 2512 modified sine wave inverter/charger way back in 1994 when I first started my conversion. I have literally done nothing to it, except adjust it. Don't discount modified sine wave inverters. Mine powers all my plugs, bathroom heater, microwave, stove hood. It powers my LED Samsung flat screen TV. The only thing noticable is the stove exhaust fan runs slower and the microwave buzzes and takes longer cooking time. Good Luck, TomC

[bobofthenorth]

I bought my Trace 2512 modified sine wave inverter/charger way back in 1994 when I first started my conversion. I have literally done nothing to it, except adjust it. Don't discount modified sine wave inverters. Mine powers all my plugs, bathroom heater, microwave, stove hood. It powers my LED Samsung flat screen TV. The only thing noticable is the stove exhaust fan runs slower and the microwave buzzes and takes longer cooking time. Good Luck, TomC

What Tom said.  I've had 2 Freedom 25s - one in the bus and one in the boat.  They are rugged old workhorses, with the emphasis on old.  But they work.  They are nominally MSW but literally the only thing we found that they wouldn't run in 10 years of ownership was electric blankets with digital controls.  Analog controls, no prob - digital controls, instant smoke release.  Fridge, freezer, microwave, TV, water heater, dozens of wall warts - all worked just fine on the old Hearts.  So if you can find one of them in good condition I wouldn't be afraid of it and you can likely buy them for next to nothing now.

[eagle19952]

What Tom said.  I've had 2 Freedom 25s - one in the bus and one in the boat.  They are rugged old workhorses, with the emphasis on old.  But they work.  They are nominally MSW but literally the only thing we found that they wouldn't run in 10 years of ownership was electric blankets with digital controls.  Analog controls, no prob - digital controls, instant smoke release.  Fridge, freezer, microwave, TV, water heater, dozens of wall warts - all worked just fine on the old Hearts.  So if you can find one of them in good condition I wouldn't be afraid of it and you can likely buy them for next to nothing now.

YUP...Not all MSW's are created equal or jagged...the older (black) sw Trace's are as close to PSW as you will ever see i have two, and a Freedom. the old SW's are much much cleaner power

[DubLloyd]

Magnum 2500 pure sine wave inverter/charger. Magnum makes a 2800 watt load sharing-meaning if you're hooked up to the power pole, it will give you you more power from the batteries if you exceed the power pole output. But it sounds like you're going to be dry camping a lot, so you don't need to pay for the extra cost of the load sharing.
I only use my inverter for short term use appliances-microwave, all plugs, bathroom wall heater, 10 gal water heater. I do not power the washer/dryer, air conditioning, (refrigerator and freezer are 120/12v automatically) since these are high wattage use and run for long time-just run your generator. Hopefully you have a good 1800rpm Diesel generator.

Brother, its all Greek to me. I am actually a home builder and this is all new to me. Thanks for ur reply. I will do my best to digest your response and the 5 others. As for Sine, thats a childhood imaginary friend of my youngest brother

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[DubLloyd]

TomC x2

In all these years of watching busnuts waste money trying to be cheap...Buy the good inverter charger first and sit back and enjoy it's functionality.

And proudly purchase one of the better SOC meters, State of Charge meters, so you can "see" how much power is going in and out. One that matches up with your inverter charger has advantages in simplicity and one stop shopping. Not every bunut is interested in the research and knowledge necessary to brew up a custom system.

You have to do some load measuring to arrive at an appropriate battery bank size. Remembering that keeping the consumer confused is in the interest of many of these vendors... you will need to teach yourself the different units of measure, and pick one to get all your numbers to add up correctly. hint hint Amp-hours is the common battery capacity measurement

A Kill-o-Watt meter off Amazon is a fabulous tool for every busnut to have, who plans to run off a battery bank. Plug your house refrigerator into it, and start gathering interesting data as to the power it consumes over time.

Beware of busnuts, their journey is often the destination...You don't want to be screwing around with a dysfunctional coach at the races, with guests and neighbours finding your antics both irritating and amusing at the same time! The system is there to serve you, not the other way around. Turn the key, throw a switch, pour a beverage.

At the races, your power consumption will likely be a lot higher than the busnut who says their prayers and goes to bed at sundown, doesn't open the fridge door all night and uses the lights for the 62 seconds necessary to find the outhouse...

As a starting place, 4 x 6 volt golf cart batteries will handily do the busnut described above. I suspect that your use might be a little close for 4?
One thing you can do to economize, is start with 4, design your battery area to accept adding more batteries, and try it out?

And what voltage are you going to use? 12 or 24?

happy coaching!
buswarrior

Man, mabe I done bit off more than I can chew. Is there a Clift Notes for bus conversion for dummys. Stream bed, dutch oven over a camp fire, and star light may be my best option out of the back of a 75 model El Comino

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[DubLloyd]

Magnum inverters are good quality, made in USA, and serviceable.   Not cheap, but quality never is.

For battery monitors, you may want to consider the Smartgauge.   Instead of calculating amps in and amps out like other monitors, it uses a self-correcting algorithm that constantly adjusts for Peukert and other variables, making it more accurate and dependable even when the batteries age.   They're now being imported by Balmar:  http://www.pbase.com/mainecruising/smart_gauge   The Smartgauge website is very informative, and also has useful information about battery wiring and other matters:  http://www.smartgauge.co.uk/sgvahrs.html

John

Thanks for the links. Look, Im from Mississippi. High school consisted of football and milkin cows. And yes, we be lackin in the big word category. This may be more than I can relate to. But Thanks

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[DubLloyd]

I bought my Trace 2512 modified sine wave inverter/charger way back in 1994 when I first started my conversion. I have literally done nothing to it, except adjust it. Don't discount modified sine wave inverters. Mine powers all my plugs, bathroom heater, microwave, stove hood. It powers my LED Samsung flat screen TV. The only thing noticable is the stove exhaust fan runs slower and the microwave buzzes and takes longer cooking time. Good Luck, TomC

Thanks, I can understand that

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[TomC]

120vac power is called alternating current-meaning it goes positive to negative to positive to negative-one cycle 60 times a second. A mechanical generator makes a perfect sine wave-the shape of the electrical wave when viewed on a oscilliscope. Modified sine wave relatively looks like a perfect sine wave but with jumps up and down creating a squared sine wave, rather than a smooth S shaped sine wave. A pure sine wave has almost smooth wave pattern-much closer than the modified sine wave. Look up what a sine wave is. Good Luck, TomC

[scanzel]

DubLloyd don't sell yourself short because you say your are from Mississippi. Converting building and maintaining a bus is an experience. Get as much info as you can and read up on things. Plumbing, electrical ac/dc and many other items. Building a conversion bus is like building a home your just doing it on wheels which makes it a lot harder. You needs to do a lot of planning and you will make mistakes during the process. I am working on my first and probably my only because of my age and it has been a 10 year part time venture. Some mistakes were made but this is how we learn. Good Luck on your venture.

[dtcerrato]

Well said. We started our first & only conversion. In 1979 & still learn by some of our mistakes. From an age w/o computers. It's a marriage, another life if you will.... With all the newness & wonderment in this day & age it's a door back through time...

[Oonrahnjay]

... A pure sine wave has almost smooth wave pattern-much closer than the modified sine wave. Look up what a sine wave is. Good Luck, TomC

     Tom is right about this but there' are some other important aspects. As mentioned, some electronics don't do well with a wave form that is not pure sine or very close to it;  at best, you may have a microwave that hums and/or cooks slowly -- at worst, you can have smoke let out of your appliance(s).  Also, an oscilloscope will show an electronics technician the wave form of a non-sine-wave inverter; the difference between the wave you have an pure sine wave can be shown in sort of a "TV like" picture/graph.  The difference (all the areas in the graph where the non-sine wave doesn't follow the sine wave) will be current drawn from the batteries and wasted, usually as heat.  In this way, a "modified" sine wave inverter will be less efficient than a pure sine wave device and will deplete batteries faster.  



This is a sample graph that shows what alternating current does (not very well, esp. the "modified sine wave" is really ratty, but some devices are worse than that).  The green area on the left is the amount of electrical energy that's being used for a given amperage of power; the jagged line in the middle is mod sine wave; the red area shown in the third wave is the amount of additional energy that will be lost - almost certainly as heat - to perform the same amount of work with power to the MSW wave form.  That lost energy will have to come from your batteries and that's the amount that the batteries will run down quicker by.  That extra power can be up to about 30%, according to the spec sheets published by some inverter manufacturers.

      Spending a little more for a pure sine wave inverter will "buy" you that wasted battery power.