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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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    If you get him to get a generator tom, there are considerable downsides. Noise is the first, Honda used to make a 300W one which was incredibly quiet but once you get to a few kW they tend to be noisy, which is a problem if other boats are present. Also it is best to avoid petrol on boats as the vapour tends to sink to the bilge and is then very dangerous and usually unnoticed If the boat has a diesel engine then an additional alternator is the way to go, charging a nice big battery as it is hidden, has a wet exhaust and probably acoustically managed too. Again I advise 24V or more, it gets the battery current more under control, an it is unwise to discharge lead acids at more than C/5 (5 hour rate) for longest life. Your car battery tends to last quite a short period because of engine starting, a fork truck battery several thousand complete cycles at c/5 or less, although they are deep discharge types which helps. You will notice that stop-start (supposedly lower emission) car batteries are much more expensive because of the horrible life they suffer! Electric traction batteries are what you really want, and weight matters little in a reasonable size narrow boat.
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    If you get him to get a generator tom, there are considerable downsides. Noise is the first, Honda used to make a 300W one which was incredibly quiet but once you get to a few kW they tend to be noisy, which is a problem if other boats are present. Also it is best to avoid petrol on boats as the vapour tends to sink to the bilge and is then very dangerous and usually unnoticed If the boat has a diesel engine then an additional alternator is the way to go, charging a nice big battery as it is hidden, has a wet exhaust and probably acoustically managed too. Again I advise 24V or more, it gets the battery current more under control, an it is unwise to discharge lead acids at more than C/5 (5 hour rate) for longest life. Your car battery tends to last quite a short period because of engine starting, a fork truck battery several thousand complete cycles at c/5 or less, although they are deep discharge types which helps. You will notice that stop-start (supposedly lower emission) car batteries are much more expensive because of the horrible life they suffer! Electric traction batteries are what you really want, and weight matters little in a reasonable size narrow boat.
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