…it may make more sense to just go the inverter route for a few remote trips a year?
Is it reasonable to think a guy could buy a clamp on inverter and take a couple deep cycle batteries with him on a 3 day/3night trip to power a few lights, charge a couple flashers, charge phones, etc? If so, does anyone have something relatively cheap and easy that they’d recommend? (It’d be awesome if it could also plug into a 12v cigarette outlet in the truck for lower wattage items while traveling)
I can’t see why you would need more than one battery for the above needs. As long as the lights are LED and you’re not running them day and night one deep cycle battery would be plenty. just shut off the inverter at night to conserve power because the inverter itself does consume some power.
I have a travel trailer at my deer hunting camp. There is no on-grid power there. One good deep cycle battery runs everything for a full weekend of hunting including the furnace which is far and away the biggest power hog. When I stay in the summer just running electric lights, water pump and charging devices and maybe running a TV takes almost no power.
The biggest thing with inverters is that you need to test the devices you’re actually going to run some electronic devices will not operate or charge off of a modified sine wave inverter. In that case you have to go to a pure sine wave inverter which is more expensive.
The only thing that I have found that does not charge off of my modified sine wave inverter is of course an Apple ipad. So this device has to go out to the truck to be charged from the cigarette lighter. I have heard that lcd televisions can be fairly sensitive so you have to test your equipment with an inverter to be sure it’s going to work with a msw inverter or buy a psw right off the bat.
