Re: inverter
The word inverter has two common meanings on a boat. One is inverter and the other is inverter/charger. <br /><br />As was mentioned, the inverter function allows you to have AC current onboard, so you can run a blender for making margaritas or plug in your laptop. Its power source is your deep cycle battery(s).<br /><br />The inverter/chargers are designed so when you plug in shore power they automatically bypassing the inverter function and route most of the current to the house AC system and route the rest though a built-in smart charger to recharge the deep cyclers. Some will even echo charge your starting battery as well.<br /><br />The inverter function comes in two flavors. One kind produces a modified sine wave when running off the batteries. Instead of a smooth, flowing curve, they produce a wave that looks like stair steps. Your blender doesnt care, but from what I have read, your laptop computer does.<br /><br />The other type of inverter produces a true sine wave, with smooth flowing curves. This is like the stuff at home in your wall. Sensitive electronics are supposed to be much happier with a true sine wave. The software for radar, sounding, GPS, chartplotting on a laptop beats the crap out of anything available in a box. Unless you want to always run your laptop on a battery, you are going to need one of these units. I have no experience with them.<br /><br />For the time being, my experience with inverters is limited to the margarita end of the spectrum
after anchoring, of course.
The boat has a (Xantrex) Freedom 25 inverter/charger. It will produce 2500w of modified sine wave AC power from the house battery bank. It also has a built in 130amp 4-stage battery charger to put it back. It came with the boat.<br /><br />If you get serious about buying an inverter, one thing to watch for is the draw on the deep cyclers. They do not want to dump current fast and a mismatched inverter may put an inappropriate demand on the deep cycle batteries. For some reason 30% is sticking in my head. Convert the inverters output in watts to amps and it should not exceed 30% of the deep cycles A/Hrs. If you need, I can verify this for you.
