1500-watt inverter, installed
For those one or two of you who read this blog regularly, you may recall that I complained some time back – certainly in the summer of 2017 and perhaps earlier than that – that our RV inverter – the electronic device that is supposed to provide AC power to our residential refrigerator while we traveled – wasn’t working. In fact it never, ever worked. Not once. Each time in cut in it almost immediately cut out, apparently due to what it perceived as an overload of its circuit. Consequently we have never been able to have the refrigerator operating while we traveled, which added an extra level of stress to each trip. We could be pretty comfortable with trips of less than 4 hours because the freezer was still below freezing when we arrived. But as we approached 5 hours on the road the freezer temperature creeped close to 32, running the risk of things thawing and bacteria growing. At the very least all of the ice in the ice dispenser would start to melt, creating an ungodly mess.
You might also remember that I complained about this to Camping World. It wasn’t really Camping World’s fault – it should have fallen on the manufacturer, Thor Industries. But it cost us $67 to have the less-than-brilliant technicians at Camping World look at the problem and declare that the culprit was a weak battery. Uh, guys, what part of “never, ever worked” (even when both the inverter and battery were brand new) did you not understand?
Beyond annoying. Infuriating.
Anyway, for a long time I thought that there was something wrong with the inverter. I eventually came around to believing that the inverter was fine but undersized for its job. The refrigerator was rated at 977 watts continuous consumption and the inverter was rated at 1000 watts continuous output. But the margin – 23 watts – was so small that if either rating was even a little bit off, or if the overload trigger was a little too sensitive, that it could fail to do its intended job. I concluded that simply replacing the inverter with a beefier model – 1500 watts – would solve the problem.
So I bought a 1500-watt inverter for $212 delivered and installed it today. Installation was a breeze – attach the 12-volt power lines and a ground, plug in the dynamic switch (the thing that switches seamlessly to use inverter power when the regular power is disconnected, either as a result of travel or a power failure) and mount it on the utility board in the front basement. Took about an hour. Initial tests suggest that it will work fine.
But I really won’t know for sure until we travel again.
If anyone needs a lightly-used (damn near never used) 1000-watt inverter, speak up.