inverter

[fishinRod]

the wife and i plan on taking a camping trip in few weeks, we are going to be camping on the water at a primitive tent site on a large lake and i'll be able to land my boat right on shore at the camp site....i want to get an DC to AC inverter to charge my boat batteries from my truck in the evenings ......iv seen them from 100 watts up to 800 and more.......not sure what i need, any suggestions?......battery charging is all i plan to do with it (im not even going to tell the wife what it is until we get up there so she dont get any ideasThumbs Up)

[Dickieboy]

DC to AC then back to DC sounds awfully inefficient. As I understand it the losses in the conversion negate the benefit.

[Cane Pole]

Home Depot sells a small 2000w power generator for about 150 bucks. My neighbor has one for charging batteries. Little noisy, but does the job.

[fishinRod]

i just need to put a little juice in the batteries each evening..only gonna be 3 nights...aint gonna run em dead.....i have two trolling batts, one is kinda a back-up , i have a transom mount trolling motor that i use occasionaly (it has gotten me back to the ramp before when my cranking and bow trolling motor died...long story).....just dont wanna get stuck in a pop up storm or get caught in a major wind shift with insufficient power as im very unfamilair with this body of water

[fishinRod]

Home Depot sells a small 2000w power generator for about 150 bucks. My neighbor has one for charging batteries. Little noisy, but does the job.

they dont allow generators in the camp ground.....because of the noise

[Dickieboy]

i just need to put a little juice in the batteries each evening..only gonna be 3 nights...aint gonna run em dead.....i have two trolling batts, one is kinda a back-up , i have a transom mount trolling motor that i use occasionaly (it has gotten me back to the ramp before when my cranking and bow trolling motor died...long story).....just dont wanna get stuck in a pop up storm or get caught in a major wind shift with insufficient power as im very unfamilair with this body of water

Leave the 'back-up' at the camp and recharge with one of these:

15 Watt, 12 Volt Solar Panel

Then rotate charged/discharged daily. Seems as cost effective as inverter idea...just a thought.

edit: Second thought 15 watts is 1.2ah and typically GOOD sun is only 5hrs per day so 6 amps is all its good for...I think.

[Dickieboy]

Seems like if you're plan is to invert from truck power why not just hook batts up directly to truck and let alternator recharge them? It will have to be running either way.

[gabowman]

Seems like if you're plan is to invert from truck power why not just hook batts up directly to truck and let alternator recharge them? It will have to be running either way.

Yea, was what I was thinking. Just use jumper cables.

[NeonMoon]

If it's just a weekend trip, you may be better-off to just buy an additional battery. Never hurts to have a spare anyway, and would probably be the best/cheapest option.

[feeshrman]

this is the best idea yet, jmo

If it's just a weekend trip, you may be better-off to just buy an additional battery. Never hurts to have a spare anyway, and would probably be the best/cheapest option.