Buy a proper camping/caravanning fridge, they usually run off 12V or gas.
Why would I want 12 volts or gas in an all electric 120 volt AC camper trailer?
The 1500 watt inverter wastes power it pulls 6 times more idle amps than the 250 watt inverter with NO LOAD. I am trying to avoid wasted power. My converters are all from Harbor Freight store.
How exactly does the solid state 1500 watt inverter draw 6 times more power than the 250 watt one when running a 200 watt load and how exactly have you confirmed this?
Because it would solve your problem
Apart from that, you already know the answer - use the 1500W inverter, and waste power (or plug it in to mains, which is what your caravan is intended for if it's all 120V).
Okay I will bite on this one.
How exactly does the solid state 1500 watt inverter draw 6 times more power than the 250 watt one when running a 200 watt load and how exactly have you confirmed this?
Or are you assuming that since it's rated at 6 times the capacity of the 250 watt one that it therefore draws 6 times as much power to do the same 200 watt conversion?
The big inverter uses about 6 times more amps than the little inverter when its not being used and the switch is turned OFF.
And these amps add up to to how much of a actual standby full off wattage draw difference?
Reason being what I can find on Harbor Freight inverters is that they are primarily the CenTech brand and the specs sheets for their 250 and 1500 watt inverters show an active on power draw of ~.5 amps and ~2 amps.
Also how are you recharging a battery bank that is that large and why can't it be charged up more often?
Double check the Amp-hour rating of your battery. Be aware that most automotive batteries are rated in CCA (Cold Cranking Amps.) Finding the real Amp-hour can sometimes be difficult. For reference, a typical auto starting battery might have a CCA rating in the range of 500-700 Amps. But it's Amp-hour rating might only be 50 to 75 Amp-hours. A 1000 Amp-hour battery will be many batteries in parallel. For your application, deep cycle marine batteries would be better than automotive starting batteries, and usually are listed showing their Amp-hour rating.
Many generators targeted for camping and industrial use have a 12 volt battery charging output, in addition to the AC outputs. Though it may not have as many watts at 12 volts as it does at 120 VAC.
Yes I am quite familiar with the aspects of charging big battery banks.
Personally if it was me I would just put a high capacity alternator and a set of heavy gauge leads (cheap set of repurposed 2 ga jumper cables) on the vehicle that pulls the camper to charge the battery when driving being a good high capacity commercial type that can put out 145+ amps continuous duty and 190+peak is only around $135 at Napa parts centers. I have put several on our larger farm tractors now and they definitely can handle doing high load work for long durations that most automotive units would cook to death in minutes trying to carry.
What I am saying is I see no point in running a generator to power a battery charger to charge the battery system while you are driving when you have perfectly viable engine for a power source already 15 feet away that can power a high capacity charging system that is capable of way more output and thus far shorter recharge times than a small genset and portable battery charger could ever do.
Especially so when you factor in that at 1500 watts before the battery charger will work out to a 15+ hour run time per recharge assuming you have a automotive battery charger that can supply close to the full 1500 watt output which most only can do a few hundred watts continuous duty.
However if are dead set on doing a genset charging system that's going to be running mostly just to charge that big battery system I would recomend building a dedicated one from a 4 - 5 Hp engine and one of those big commercial alternators.
Being able to throw 140 - 150 amps at that 1000 amp battery system for 7 - 8 hours Vs a few hundred watt battery charger for 30 - 40 hours shouldn't be too hard to figure out where your time and money are better spent.
That explained a few things. My battery goes dead sooner than it should according to the math. I figured there must be a very large wasted of power in the DC/AC inverter but....... maybe the problem is the battery rating is not correct? I have learned I can not count on the math being correct. I need to learn how much power is lost in the inverter. I need to learn the true power of the battery.
I need to learn the true power of the battery.
Is it just one battery? - and how many times bigger than a normal car battery is it (essentially the larger the battery the larger the capacity).
I had one 650 AH battery. When the math says I pulled 350 amps out of the battery then the battery is dead something is not right?
4 years ago I bought a 1000 AH battery. It was doing better for the type of camping we were doing then so I never did any testing.
Now we want to spend early part of our retirement living in National Parks for a while. Now I am getting more serious about having a reliable battery system that wont play tricks on us and go dead sooner than it should.
I know parallel batteries will run themselves dead trying to charge each other. If we need 2000 amps it will be best to buy two 1000 amp 6 volt batteries and put them in series and charge the 2 batteries with a 12 volt charger.
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