24-09-2015, 04:37 PM
Below is a photo taken from the instruction manual of my inverter. It will explain what I was explaining earlier when I went a wee bit off-topic talking about boat electrics. Seeing as a few of you are interested in inverters, I'll now explain more carefully how all of this was set-up.
You can see in the pic that the inverter is shown plugged into mains supply. There is a fused cable at the back (via a small recess where the 15 amp fuse lies.)
You will see two cables that connect to the batteries. All of this is showing a simple battery charger at the moment. This is how it is being used at the moment as it's been taken out of the actual boat circuit for now.
I should add that the DC cables that go to the batteries need to be considered carefully. Charging current is set at 10 Amps. That isn't a great deal of current. However I used 100 Amp cable here due to the fact if we switch the unit from charger to inverter use, larger currents may be drawn. More of that later.
The AC electrician who wired my boat did something I don't really agree with. What he did was take the plug supply you can see in the diagram and connect these AC leads (live, neutral and ground) to the shoreline supply via the shoreline female and male plugs and sockets. That means, when you take your 15 Amp shoreline socket and plug in external power into your boat from the boatyard meter, the charger unit is switched on whether you like it or not. That means it's always charging the batteries and the fan is always going round (and nothing lasts forever).
Anyway, that is all history. I took the unit out and fixed the fuse. I fitted a plug the same way as in the diagram above and I use it as a battery charger. One of the batteries was of no use. I ought to point out that I found if a battery is half-way good, voltage does tend to rise quickly. However, the charge that was finally held was only 12.4 volts so my batteries aren't that great (they're old).
Should you wish to use this as an inverter, simply remove the mains supply and switch the unit on. At the front you will see output sockets. If you plugged a DVD player or TV into this, it would power the device just drawing from the batteries. If you plugged in something that's heavy on Kilowatts, you would get high current through those battery cables so it's wise to fit 100 amp cable.
These units can be expensive and mine is modified sine wave.
You can see in the pic that the inverter is shown plugged into mains supply. There is a fused cable at the back (via a small recess where the 15 amp fuse lies.)
You will see two cables that connect to the batteries. All of this is showing a simple battery charger at the moment. This is how it is being used at the moment as it's been taken out of the actual boat circuit for now.
I should add that the DC cables that go to the batteries need to be considered carefully. Charging current is set at 10 Amps. That isn't a great deal of current. However I used 100 Amp cable here due to the fact if we switch the unit from charger to inverter use, larger currents may be drawn. More of that later.
The AC electrician who wired my boat did something I don't really agree with. What he did was take the plug supply you can see in the diagram and connect these AC leads (live, neutral and ground) to the shoreline supply via the shoreline female and male plugs and sockets. That means, when you take your 15 Amp shoreline socket and plug in external power into your boat from the boatyard meter, the charger unit is switched on whether you like it or not. That means it's always charging the batteries and the fan is always going round (and nothing lasts forever).
Anyway, that is all history. I took the unit out and fixed the fuse. I fitted a plug the same way as in the diagram above and I use it as a battery charger. One of the batteries was of no use. I ought to point out that I found if a battery is half-way good, voltage does tend to rise quickly. However, the charge that was finally held was only 12.4 volts so my batteries aren't that great (they're old).
Should you wish to use this as an inverter, simply remove the mains supply and switch the unit on. At the front you will see output sockets. If you plugged a DVD player or TV into this, it would power the device just drawing from the batteries. If you plugged in something that's heavy on Kilowatts, you would get high current through those battery cables so it's wise to fit 100 amp cable.
These units can be expensive and mine is modified sine wave.
