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quote:Originally posted by boat391
...now what about inverters how big of a draw is a 3000 watt and would it really be a good investment thanks for your help
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Wow, inverters. Our lab here has an UPS for the entire building and the number of batteries just to give us power for 15 minutes at full load takes up the space of a two car garage!!! I have an inverter, a small 600 watt unit for running a drill in the wilderness for example, and it does its designed job well.
Like life, you don't get something for nothing. To convert 12 volts DC to 120 volts AC there must be some compromise. Today's inverters are nearly 90-95% effecient but the average inverter still runs around 80% effeciency. You'll get the 120 VAC easily, its the CURRENT (AMPS) that will be missing and its current that makes things run. Doing the math quickly I'm estimating that you'll need somewhere around 350-400 amps of DC current to get you 3000 watts of 120VAC power and that equals many, many batteries in your basement.
The process requires the DC voltage to be chopped to make a square wave, run through a transformer to increase the voltage, then regulated based on load. The cheapest inverters never clean up that square wave so electronics like computers and microwaves react poorly to that input voltage. Most inverters use a modified sinewave which is a squared off sinewave and its acceptable to most applications.
One final thought, most electronics take the input AC voltage and immediately convert it to DC through the device's power supply.
Since you have plenty of DC current available get a DC television and DVD player for those wilderness days at camp.