Generators, any advice !

Im gonna sound like a total thickey ! but when you talk about invertors, do you have to have the M/H engine running to use TV, lights, etc, can someone just give me a simple overview of the use of an invertor.

Thanks Tom

PS I havent gone out and bought a genny yet, Im just looking at options for power.
 
TWS said:
Im gonna sound like a total thickey ! but when you talk about invertors, do you have to have the M/H engine running to use TV, lights, etc, can someone just give me a simple overview of the use of an invertor.

Thanks Tom
Click to expand...
An inverter is just a device thats converts 12 volt DC power into 240 volt power, it just plugs in a 12 V socket. You dont have to have the engine running, but you can imagine how much battery power they use.
 
What does it do?

An invertor is a box of tricks that takes a 12 volt dc supply and converts it to 240 volts ac thereby enabling you to use most mains powered equipment for example a microwave oven,hope this helps.Andy.
 
Thanks for the replys, can anyone give me a rough guide as to how long a fully charged leisure battery would keep a TV running for using an invertor ?
 
TWS said:
Thanks for the replys, can anyone give me a rough guide as to how long a fully charged leisure battery would keep a TV running for using an invertor ?
Click to expand...

That really is a 'how long is a piece of string' question. It depends on the wattage of the 240 V appliance you are using.
You need to convert the watts of the appliance to amps, then whatever amp hour leisure battery you have.
As a rough guide 12 watts is equal to about 1 amp.
But also your battery will not discharge all of its avalible amperage before it will not run the inverter.
 
You should also bear in mind that inverters will burn power just by themselves and on top the appliance you are running through them.
Unless you have solar panels and at least a couple of high amp/hr leisure batterys, inverters are only really any use for running low power items, in fact the very items that are usually 12 volt anyway.
 
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