Day 35 - Converter Test

This morning, I shut off the shore power before there was any significant solar charging. From the furnace and RV interior lights, the battery was at 93%. Not really down enough for testing. After two cups of coffee from the Keurig, breakfast made on the induction cooktop, an hour or so of YouTube RV videos, and two hours of running the refrigerator, the batteries were down to 86%. Oh well, good enough for an initial test. The first picture shows the little dongle on the new converter that could be run inside somewhere if you want to monitor its operation. The black button on the bottom is for manual override such as selecting boost mode.

I plugged the Kill-a-Watt meter in series with the power cord and plugged the converter into shore power. I then pressed the manual override button and selected “Boost” mode. This is what I would do if running off a generator. Initial current draw was 10.4 amps AC and it was pushing over 60 amps into the battery according the the Trimetric battery monitor though some of this was coming from the solar. After about 15 minutes, the current into the batteries had dropped to 35 amps and the batteries were at 91%, After 25 minutes, the current had dropped to 15 amps and maybe 5 amps were from the solar and the batteries were at 93%. At this point, I turned off the converter. Successful. This is what I was hoping for. After 25 minutes of charging the batteries, it was putting out more than the original converter did initially.

This looks to be a worthwhile addition to the RV. Much of the afternoon was spent at a campground free picnic. The RV park and golf course sponsored the picnic including complimentary champagne and beer. Bridget won a door prize though she’s not sure what to do with it...