x

Michael T

x

Bruce

For what it's worth we added a third battery and a 1000w inverter to our 250FV and love it.

Of course we have no generator so having any 110 ac power when we are away from the marina is great for us. We run the inverter off of 2 of the batteries. It will run our small TV and DVD player for over 3 hrs, or our A/C for a little over and hour, or the micro-wave for long enough. After the batteries get low, we start the boat off of the other battery, run the boat for a while or plug into shore power to charge the pair. I mounted the inverter in the engine bay on what I would call the bulkhead in front on the motor and hard wired it the batteries. Here's where it gets kind of strange, I removed the off/on switch from the inverter and mounted it in the battery selector switch box on the port side of the boat. That way you do not have to open the engine hatch to turn on the inverter. I also ran the 110v ac  electrical cord from the inverter up through one of the rear port side cup holders so I can plug it in (with an adapter) where the shore power normally plugs in. 

  Good luck with yours.

212rowboat

MT, your sat, tv, and sound system pull 1kw? Sweet baby James, I bet you can be heard coming for miles!!

There was a question a couple weeks ago about available shore power.. your question and that one can be solved with this, though its a touch off subject: a commercial grade UPS.. a/c power in, converted to d/c, charge battery that's part of UPS, inverted back to a very clean a/c, and provided multiple channels and voltages.. the UPS, if it is the first stop after shore power boarding and ran parallel to the battery chargers, will clean any weird shore power and protect against spikes.. then feed the panel box off the UPS.. Whallah, clean power.. feed d/c power from your genset and battery bank to the d/c channel of the UPS, and before the panel, and there you have it- clean spike free inverted power...

Drawbacks: weight.. one UPS system I use at work weighs likely #200.. cost: you'd have $2k in it for a top of the line UPS, but... Power wouldn't be a concern much no matter if shore or generated.. and, it is self cooled and regulated via breaker panels.

Just a thought to add to the pile. :-)

212rowboat

Yeah.. I realize that.. but a part you missed is a very nice part: regulator.. clean power no matter the source and a high quality inverter+converter, all in a nice self cooled system..

Those batteries act like giant capacitors during a surge, which keeps temperatures controlled, arcs from occurring (depending on quality of wiring) and scrubs the spike before powering components on the downwind side.. an inverter doesn't do all that..

Sorry MT.. didn't mean to hijack your thread. :-)

212rowboat

With a two speed. :-)

Michael T

x