I have a small RV. 21 foot, Toyota Sunrader. I also have a supply of used APC Smart-UPS 750 battery backups sitting around. My company has decided when one "goes bad", we replace the entire unit rather than the replaceable battery. A terrible waste of money, IMO, but that decision is above my paygrade.
I did a little research on line to see if anyone had repurposed these things as inverters and of course there are hundreds of youtube videos showing it has been done! Is there anything that hasn't been documented on yt yet? So, my plan is to use this UPS as an onboard inverter/charger. I would also like to incorporate a modest solar setup. 100-200 watts maybe?
I think this will work, but there is one thing that complicates it a bit. This UPS uses a 24V battery supply. No problem, string together a pair of group 27 RV batteries, right? That should supply modest AC output. My desire is to be able to run a small 600 watt microwave for a few minutes at a time and charge electronic devices. The tricky part is how do you gain the ability to charge these from the truck 12V charging system. You can get step up DC converters pretty cheaply, but I wonder how efficient they are? And how about the solar side? Can a small PV array charge a 24V bank? My last concern is powering the coach 12V devices. This isn't much of a demand, lights, water pump, fridge (when not on lp). Am I going to have any battery issues if I power this stuff from one of these batteries? I considered splitting it up between the two, but then you have the issue of grounds at 2 different potentials, not a good thing.
Of course, before actually deploying this, I plan on doing fairly extensive test runs with it all sitting on a bench in my basement. No point in burning down my RV. I kind of like it.
I did a little research on line to see if anyone had repurposed these things as inverters and of course there are hundreds of youtube videos showing it has been done! Is there anything that hasn't been documented on yt yet? So, my plan is to use this UPS as an onboard inverter/charger. I would also like to incorporate a modest solar setup. 100-200 watts maybe?
I think this will work, but there is one thing that complicates it a bit. This UPS uses a 24V battery supply. No problem, string together a pair of group 27 RV batteries, right? That should supply modest AC output. My desire is to be able to run a small 600 watt microwave for a few minutes at a time and charge electronic devices. The tricky part is how do you gain the ability to charge these from the truck 12V charging system. You can get step up DC converters pretty cheaply, but I wonder how efficient they are? And how about the solar side? Can a small PV array charge a 24V bank? My last concern is powering the coach 12V devices. This isn't much of a demand, lights, water pump, fridge (when not on lp). Am I going to have any battery issues if I power this stuff from one of these batteries? I considered splitting it up between the two, but then you have the issue of grounds at 2 different potentials, not a good thing.
Of course, before actually deploying this, I plan on doing fairly extensive test runs with it all sitting on a bench in my basement. No point in burning down my RV. I kind of like it.
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