A How-To On Inverters

In order to help you power all these great devices that are being presented on this weblog, Ocean Navigator has released a newsletter discussing the necessity of inverters and how to install them.
“Inverters have become a desirable piece of equipment to provide AC electricity (alternating current, just like household service) onboard. This is done by taking direct current from your batteries, changing the type of current (current is measured in amps) and increasing the voltage from 12 or 24 volts to 120 volts. Notice that the voltage in most applications is a 10-to-1 exchange � from 12 to 120. This is very helpful in realizing quickly that for the same power output, divide the watts output from an inverter by 12 to get the number of amps from your batteries. This can be staggering when you use a large AC appliance like a hair drier at 1,200 watts and that takes 100 amps DC from the batteries.”