Quote:
Originally Posted by Eesmithdesigns
My smb has a power converter. I would like to put a renogy inverter in so I have power all the time. Question is- do I get rid of the power converter or somehow hook them up together? My husband is really good at electrical stuff, but he is generally confused by the setup of the smb power converter.
Thanks for any direction!
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It's quite straightforward if you have some basic electrical knowledge.
Is your converter an Intellipower unit? ..... does it have the charge wizard pendent?
If possible, post the P/N.
The converter is just a battery charger and it's wired to the house batteries....should be anyway.....depending on the way your starting and house batteries are connected together (isolator or battery separator) the converter may charge the starting battery as well.
If your Renogy inverter does not have a built-in converter/charger you can leave the charger/converter in-place and just install the inverter.
Assuming that when you plug in to shore power the 115Vac stuff turns on in the van.......this is where you'll need some basic electrical knowledge.
You'll either need a transfer switch to switch the AC outlets between shore power and inverter power, or just buy a combo inverter/charger; these have transfer switches built-in. You wire the inverter to the battery with big fat battery cables and then the 115VAC output of the inverter wires into your breaker panel that supplies the 115VAC outlets in the van. If the inverter has a built-in converter/charger you wire the shore power to the 115VAC input on the inverter. In this case you just yank out the old converter/charger.
If your inverter is just an inverter (no charger/converter/transfer switch) then as mentioned above you can just leave the existing converter in place and wire the inverter between the house batteries and the breaker panel. You will still get 115VAC when plugged in to shore power but you will need to turn the inverter on. (you will actually get 115VAC any time you turn on the inverter, shore power or not..that's the whole point of an inverter) This is somewhat less efficient if you use shore power a lot but will work fine. This is how my van is set up.....been working this way for years.
In the above example the inverter supplies 115VAC when turned on...if you plug shore power in the converter will keep the battery charged while the inverter is drawing power from it.
How large (how many amp-hours) are your house batteries and how large (1000W/2000W etc) is your new inverter? Do you have any large electrical loads that you need to power such as a microwave?
When Scalf77 reads this I'm sure he'll have more advice and may be able to whip up a wiring diagram..... 
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