[A/S] inverters

[Jd Lyall <news@xxxxxxxxxx>]

I've lived on inverters for a few years. Household inverter and battery 
pack and solar panels. In Haiti.
Almost all inverters you will see are 'modified sine wave'. I'd call 
them 'modified square wave' actually, but since Sine Wave is what you 
get from the mains outlet, thats what they reference.

What you are looking at there at Inverters R Us is something suitable 
for recharging your laptop in the car. It costs less than 50 bux, no?

If you have a conventional CRT television, it will eat a lot of current. 
Lots of amps. I have an LCD television for the trailer. It actually runs 
on DC but I've never hooked it up to the DC circuits of the trailer 
cause I've never needed to watch when I wasn't plugged in.

Many other answers about making coffee and toast with your propane stove 
are perfectly on the mark.

An inverter would be useful for running a drill, perhaps. Or an air 
pump. Maybe a soldering iron? 12 volt soldering irons don't work worth 
squat. With an investment like an Airstream you should look into a more 
serious inverter if you really will be dry camping and needing AC power.

I had a Trace 1500 watt inverter/charger. Never needed more power than 
that, but a true sine wave would be better if you will run a video tape 
recorder. They want clean power. Computers don't seem to care, but some 
things will not sync to anything but a real sine wave from an alternator.

There are inverters there for less than $300 which will give you 1500 or 
more watts. Don't know how long they will last. Xantrex/Trace units are 
more than that.