well welcome back to Steve Robb reviews today I'm gonna take you along with her really I think I
neat experiment with a power inverter I've got a new one that's it right there I'm gonna show you
that inverter and it is just guys this is the bottom of the inverter if you ever want to get
one it's an industrial unit and it's made by trip light I don't know if these guys have ever heard
that name before but these inverters go in boats RVs ambulances and they're made to run so that
you can either have like in a boat shore power or you can have solar power or you know you can
have it run off your batteries and it will detect which source is being used and turn that source
on the most efficient way so I I did contact the manufacturer and I asked them how much power does
this use an amperage per hour when it's turned on and there's no load applied and they said it
should read under one amp so I'll look forward to the future of testing this all but I've mocked up
an experimental stand I don't recommend any of you do this kind of stuff because you know you
could get hurt and it's not to code this is only for my purposes only for experimenting with this
inverter I'd like to get my cabin completely off grid completely and not have to use my inverter
I'm sorry my generator and only use the inverter but for now I'm just going to take one branch
circuit that I have at my cabin and I'm gonna try it with that and I'm going to try a fridge
I'll explain the fridge later but I'll show you the inverter and I'll show you some neat
features of the inverter well here's the inverter on my bench here and guys this thing weighs like
over 40 pounds it is just incredible how heavy and heavy-duty it is it's not just an inverter
it also charges your batteries and it does it all automatically now I'm not going to use the charge
feature for now because I don't really require it I got to get a lot more set up and there's a
lot of wiring to this and I'm doing my best but there is a cover that goes over here and there
is a cover that covers the the two main lugs for your battery cables coming into it so let's take
a closer look at this well I've got your pretty well zoomed in here and it's pretty basic there's
actually nothing in the front that says except a ground lug to put your chassis if it's going
in a vehicle but on the back here here's your exhaust fan when it's under load this fan will
go on and here's the negative post here's the positive post for your battery cables very easy
to hook up I just put a little door on here you know just tape and a piece of metal and that's
it and in here is where your reset breakers are and up here there's two sets of dip switches and
what I did is I only had to turn one of them switches off so that the charged part is not
working and it does come with monitors lights on both sides and of course I'll be in the cab and
I can't see any of that stuff but it does come with this cable insert here and you can remote
up to 50 feet away operate this as if you're standing up in front of it which I thought is
incredible and I haven't looked into that too much so far and of course there's a switch here you can
turn the inverter on and off when it's not being used so it doesn't drop power from your battery
bank so this is pretty basic here and you've got two sets of leads coming in I blocked this one
off here because I'm not having any power going into it just power coming out so all I've got
is a ground out a hot out and a neutral out now there is another little small panel along the
side here that's been covered up and that's for a remote for your to turn your generator off and
on if your generator is accepting that and guys this is very a complex unit and you have to do
a lot of studying on it and so far I'm just going to the basic function of the inverter and it will
provide 2000 watts and up to 4000 Watts peak and that's with a you know a start up load so let me
show you the stand that I've built for it and I'll try to explain what I'm trying to do well
here's the little stand that I have here that I've made I've mocked this up to be almost duplicate of
what I have in there now and what I have now is I got a small little 400 watt inverter here and
from the 400 watt inverter I have two male plugs that go into the inverter and then go into my
wall socket to provide power only for my inverter power for one wall outlet so what I've done is try
to duplicate it as much as possible make it easy so when I go up there I can wire this all up fast
again I've got this two receptacles here so the two out of the wall will come over and just plug
in there the wire will go along here and plug into the inverter right there and then I have
my two battery cables here that will plug into that stud and that stud so it's pretty easy and
what I've done here is put in a 300 DC amp manual breaker and there's a reason why I'm doing that
because every inverter I've ever had before has capacitors in there so when you try and hook it
up you're going to get a spark I don't like no spark stuff and 300 amps is just under I'd say
around 2700 Watts around 2800 watts so that should be no problem for the inverter so I can get that
peak load you know for starting up a device that actually Peaks that high so there she is there and
of course the cables drop off to the end there and I got the ends on there that will attach to
my two batteries with 5/16 studs on the top and I'll hook that up and it should work out fine
so that's the rig rate there and a lot of people are wondering about 300 amps well in the garage I
have a hundred and fifty amp on my breaker there and that's about 1800 watts yeah sometimes if I
plug in my leaf blower and I have anything else on she'll trip it so you know this here should
work out fine plus I can turn it off the way it is now and there's the on but I can turn it off
and hook up my wires don't worry about Sparks and I think it's a lot safer way to go like I
say this is just experimental for me right now and I'm gonna take you up to the cabin in the
future and show you how this is all set up and we'll see but let's talk a little bit about the
fridge I ordered okay so let's talk a little bit about this fridge I ordered a fridge from
Costco I searched around for a long time to find a fridge I wanted a small mini fridge this one like
a couple of cubic feet and it has a small freezer in the top it had to be a manual defrost if you
go with anything else semi defrost or fully automatic defrost it just burns way too many
amps so what you do is you have to take a look at your Energy Star rating on this particular one it
was 218 kilowatts a year now these are tested and they're rough figures but roughly that's
what it's going to burn in a year and that's two hundred and eighteen thousand watts so you take
the two hundred and eighteen thousand divided by 365 and that's going to be about six hundred Watts
a day this is going to burn now 600 watts a day is roughly 25 watts an hour or roughly two amps
at twelve point six volts and I think I can run this fridge including the inverter the burners
I'm putting down the inverter as one amp an hour I think I can run the whole system including the
fridge for about three amps an hour at 72 M today but remember when you know it's daylight hours the
system is charging and I can get over 20 amps off my solar panels so I suspect that the fridge will
be running just strictly off the solar panel from daylight to dusk and then I'll be using
the battery bank for the dark hours now of course when you have a cloudy situation I don't know I'm
not that familiar with these panels yet but I am sure I can get at least like even on a cloudy day
probably three amps no problem off them panels and I think I can run this fridge now this fridge was
under $200 compared to you're going to buy one of these energy-efficient you know like DC fridges
that you see and you're going to spend way over a thousand dollars or close to it and they kind
of look like a glorified camping cooler kind of thing I wanted a regular fridge I don't need a
big fridge I just wanted a small little freezer you know like this not very big and I believe
that well y'all show you the fridge when when it comes in and I'll do the second part of this when
I get up there and yeah this is an experiment on my part I believe I can run a two hundred dollar
fridges that are really really really efficient well I think I have more capacity on my system I
don't need to go with that efficient now I have heard some people say oh you need a pure sine
wave inverter this is not this is a modified sine wave but this isn't this isn't like some wing wing
inverter this is a very expensive inverter and you know so the modified sine wave I've had it before
and I've experienced it and I've tried fridges of a modified sine wave and they seem to run
fine you know there's a lot of truckers out there that have a fridge in their rig and you know it's
modified sine-wave they're not all pure sine-wave and burgers the thing is you can't get a fridge it
has all kinds of digital electronics on it you know in most small little mini bar fridges well
they just don't most of them but you can get some but that's why you got to be careful what kind of
fridge yet and I looked at fridges from the Louis I got was two hundred and eighteen thousand watts
burned for the whole year and some were up to about three hundred and I believe twenty
so that's a huge swing so if I get this fridge to run off of two amps an hour I'd be happy I'm gonna
bring all my testing equipment up north and we're going to try it I'm gonna see what kind of results
we get and I think it's going to work now I don't know how many people are interested in this kind
of thing but you know what I think you can run a regular bar fridge off an inverter a half-decent
inverter and saved the expense of purchasing like $1,000 or more you know super efficient fridge or
going propane like a lot of remote places buddy mine he has a camp down the road for me and he's
got a propane fridge try and buy propane fridge and they're expensive even a small one like out of
a you know like a camping trailer and that kind of stuff you go buy brand new you're talking thousand
dollars or more easy and then you got to have a propane tank and you got to get them filled and
you know a friend of mine that starts up his propane fridge takes six hours before it gets
cold electric fridge won't do that no I know this is gonna provide the power for my electric fridge
120 volts and how long is it gonna take for it get cold well these guys all had your height will go
off in your house before and I would say under an hour it's back up and running and you know this
kind of stuff you don't go to wait like six hours like a propane fridge does and a lot of people
don't want to leave the fridge on all summer long when they're not there all the time so they turn
it off when they get there they turn it on and you know what it's expensive with propane too so well
I hope you enjoyed this little bit of a video on me trying to explain this experiment like I say
don't try to copy any of this stuff that I'm doing because you may get hurt this is the experiment on
my part and I am NOT a qualified electrician I'm far from it and I'd be interested in hearing any
comments on anything that you've seen here that maybe just don't look right because you know
what I like to you know take the best advice from the smartest people I have on YouTube and
I've got some really sharp guys in my channel that are electricians and electrical engineers
and they know a lot more stuff about this and I do and I always like to get their tips because
you know what we're all learning together so thanks for joining me here today and if you
haven't seen this channel before you welcome to subscribe and I'm going to have a part two
to this we're up at the cabin Northern Ontario and we're going to get all the results Cheers
you