Inverter Installation

zaralps · 03-31-2010, 10:38 PM

My 06 van came with the shore power and marine battery with converter in it and I'm looking to upgrade to an inverter/charger like the Xantrex. A local shop looked at it and wants to put the inverter in, but install a new outlet that will be its only plug in. I talked with Peter at SMB and he made it sound as simple as putting the inverter in place of the converter. This would allow the 3 outlets installed by SMB to be powered either way. I'm not that knowledgeable about these things...which is correct? I don't want to figure out what outlet to us depending on what source I have. Please dumb it down a bit as I'm not an electrical engineer : )

Also, is Xantrex the way to go? I think it was the Prosine 2.0.

Thanks,
Jeff

jage · 03-31-2010, 11:28 PM

Peter is correct. At least that is the way SMB did mine. It would be silly (IMHO) to ignore the wiring in the van and install a new lone socket. I'd find someone new to do your electrical...

John and Dana · 04-03-2010, 07:04 PM

Ok, I will try to make this as simple as possible. When you are plugged into shore power the circuit for the outlets is energized which also carries power to the inverter/charger which it uses to charge the batteries. When shore power is disconnected and the inverter is turned on the electricity flows from the batteries through the inverter energizing the outlets.

I am with Jage regarding the local shop. Either they don't know what they are doing or they are to lazy to figure out the wiring in the van. Either way you are probably better of finding a shop more familiar with RV or Marine wiring.

John

Scalf77 · 04-04-2010, 07:53 AM

The best that I can tell, the converter is plugged into one of the outlets you have. I am really just going by the diagram in the sportsmobile manual, so it could be hard wired into the same circuit, but they show it plugged in. When you wire in a inverter/charger you would take the wires that go from shore power inlet and run them into the input of the inverter. The output of the inverter would then go to the 30 AMP input circuit breaker ( Where the shore power originally went). I have the trip-lite inverter and have no complaints about it (It is not a true sine wave inverter). I would move on to another shop that can do it right.

-greg

jage · 04-04-2010, 09:01 AM

Note that with the inverter installation you would remove the convertor...