Run whole 2012 keystone cougar 5th wheel on inverter ? How to do it?

[Sokcap48]

I did what I think you are speaking of-I will try to load some pics. You can’t run the world but we run coffee pot in the AM and then watch TV in evening. Depends on how many AH of batteries you have on what you will be able to do. That curling iron is going to eat up power fast. Also use a class T fuse, they are round and will handle continuous use, (JLLN 300-P) is the model #—the flat type get hot and burn up.1- shows a holder with a cap on it made from black plastic pipe, for end of cord, it comes up from other side. 2-batteries (four Trojan T145 plus ) and controller. 2- regular 30 amp cord plugged into 2000 watt Renogy inverter. 4-I fastened it along the frame with electrical conduit fasteners. We lived 5 months this way in AZ last winter. I ran 600 watts of panels and have a gen. for back up. Have questions PM me. Hope this helps.

[WJQ]

First, I have not read all of the comments you received. Most people on this blog offer sound advice. One I saw was to caution you as "it is not simple." I agree with that comment.

I have installed a combined 280 Watt solar system and a 2000 Watt inverter with a surge rating of 4000 Watts for 40 milliseconds. I did not plan on using "cords" for anything. I am a retired engineer and have done extensive house wiring to meet the electrical code.

Here are my suggestions:

1. If you live in an area where you do not need the air conditioner, buy a Honda 2000 watt generator. They cost about $1000. It is the easiest near-term solution that you can always use as a backup power system. Then, when you want power, plug your RV into it as it then will act as shore power. With this generator, you can run everything except you air conditioner.

2. Then, start reading lots of blogs, talking to solar system specialists (you need about 300 to 400 watts of solar if you are out more than a couple of days) to recharge your batteries. By the way, if you do not have high-quality 6 Volt batteries, put them on your list. Trojan T105 and US Battery 2200 are good examples but they cost about $160 to $170 each. Two will do but more is better. Even better yet are Lithium-Ion Batteries. Read lots about them as they give you lots of power but cost a lot more in the short term. You will find out that a financial case can be made that even at $1000, they are cheaper in the long run than any lead-acid battery. Two 12 volt Lithium batteries will give you about twice the power of 4 6-volt lead-acid batteries. I suggest calling Trojan Tech support to discuss the options. They sell both kinds of batteries.

3. Battery capacity is necessary to run anything for a short duration. My list is like yours -- including the curling iron for the wife! My list also included the microwave and I discuss that below.

4. Lastly, one "mistake" I made on my system is that I did not know that microwaves have a surge power requirement about 3 to 4 times the name plat power. Thus, my 1350 Watt microwave trips my inverter at startup. It runs fine on my Honda generator.

My solution next year is to buy a smaller microwave or see if the new inverter-based microwaves have a lower surge power requirement. So far, I have not found any tech support people that know that answer as those microwaves are fairly new.

So good luck. Buy your Honda generator and then take your time learning about the other items listed above.

[Farside]

It all boils down to how many watts do you want to pull from the batteries and for how long. A normal flooded lead acid battery will have about 100 amp hours, or 12v x 100ah = 1200 watts of power for an hour. However, you should NEVER run a lead acid battery down 100%. Fifty percent and you should be able to recover it without any issues. So, you are really only talking about 600 watts of usable battery power.

Different types of batteries and how they are wired up will have different capacities. The most efficient will be the Lithium batteries, because you can discharge them to practically 0% and still be able to recover the battery. But, the price of them is about 5x more expensive that a lead acid battery.

If you wire multiple batteries in parallel, you can double, triple, etc. your watt storage.

As for the size of an inverter, it would depend on how many amps, or watts you plan on pulling at any one time. Since a microwave pulls about 1200 watts, you would want one that could pull that many watts, plus a little more in a pinch. If you want to run an A/C unit that needs 3000 watts, you would need an inverter that could handle it. Just remember that if your batteries don't have the amp hours/watts stored up, nothing will run very long.