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Inverters?

Tomgunn
Happy Easter to all! ?


My friend's escaped Ewell, due to where we are today, and staying on his narrow boat he's owned for decades and is spending most of his time, apart from the beer, doing lot's of repairs.


Now, what's missing from his ship is... a washing machine. The thing is, the power supply, to that area of narrow boat ships', is somewhat low so, I suggested about an 'inverter'. He said that some of those ships have installed 'inverters' BUT, they have to have lot's of heavy duty batteries.


Can an inverter be run off of the mains'?  I guess that that may be a stupid question as the inverters' that I have run off of my car battery supplying 240v so, I KNOW how amazing you lot are and the wealth, (grovel, grovel), of information is unrivaled! 


So... he want's a 3K washing machine... can an inverter be worked, without lot's of batteries, to run this?


Thanks...


regards too, Tom


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  • 0

    Can an inverter be run off of the mains'? 



    Is the problem that the mains voltage is low? If so you could have a rectifier-inverter arrangement (basically a UPS without the battery) which would be able to generate an in-spec voltage from a low one (provided enough current can be drawn from the supply). In some countries automatic voltage regulators are popular - but often they're a simpler arrangement - typically a variable autotransformer and a mechanism to vary the taps. If you did want to go down the inverter route a reasonably high power UPS (even with a modest battery) might serve the purpose (but beware of any large starting currents).


    I've no experience of boat batteries, but caravan 'leisure' batteries (at least of the usual lead-acid type) usually come with a recommendation generally not to discharge them below 50% otherwise the lifespan can be significantly reduced - hence a 110Ah battery might only give you 55Ah of useful power (e.g. 660W for an hour for 12V battery) - so you might need more lead & acid than a simple calculation suggests if you did go down the battery & inverter route.


    Failing that a decent genny.


       - Andy.
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  • 0

    Can an inverter be run off of the mains'? 



    Is the problem that the mains voltage is low? If so you could have a rectifier-inverter arrangement (basically a UPS without the battery) which would be able to generate an in-spec voltage from a low one (provided enough current can be drawn from the supply). In some countries automatic voltage regulators are popular - but often they're a simpler arrangement - typically a variable autotransformer and a mechanism to vary the taps. If you did want to go down the inverter route a reasonably high power UPS (even with a modest battery) might serve the purpose (but beware of any large starting currents).


    I've no experience of boat batteries, but caravan 'leisure' batteries (at least of the usual lead-acid type) usually come with a recommendation generally not to discharge them below 50% otherwise the lifespan can be significantly reduced - hence a 110Ah battery might only give you 55Ah of useful power (e.g. 660W for an hour for 12V battery) - so you might need more lead & acid than a simple calculation suggests if you did go down the battery & inverter route.


    Failing that a decent genny.


       - Andy.
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