Foretravel Owners' Forum For owners and Fans of Foretravel Motorcoaches September 10, 2025 ...

Inverter size

October 13, 2022, 02:09:33 pm

I'm considering putting in a inverter just for the fridge and I am thinking of a 500 watt Victron
inverter. The tag on the fridge say .65 amps and the most 12 volt amps I've seen is 13 amps and
mostly 11 amps. Is 500 a big enough inverter.

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Re: Inverter size

Reply #1 – October 13, 2022, 02:30:57 pm

I have 2 of this companies' units.  The 1000 runs my small fridge.    500 sounds  too small IMHO.

EDECOA Power Inverter 1500W 3000 Watt Pure Sine Wave 12V dc 110V 120V ac LCD...

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Re: Inverter size

Reply #2 – October 13, 2022, 04:36:05 pm

I have the same EDECOA  brand as Mike above. They are not expensive and are sine wave. For long life, the inverter should not operate over about 2/3 of it's rating. That's not peak but full time rating. So, a 1000 watt inverter is best operating at about 65 percent with startup wattage being a bit higher. YouTube has some good videos of inverters failing with some being big time with lots of smoke.

Make sure the microwave is on a sine wave inverter as the cooking time is about 3X faster than the OEM Taytronics MSW inverter our coach came with.

Most of the newer inverters don't draw much at idle unlike our OEM inverter. As soon as it was switched on, the house voltage dropped a lot. Not true with the new inverters we have.

Efficient inverters can reduce the need for more batteries in the house bank so you can leave them on 24/7 if you want.

Pierce

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Re: Inverter size

Reply #3 – October 13, 2022, 06:39:09 pm

Pierce by your calculations the 500 watts should be fine as 65% of 500 is 325 watts and I use
156 watts I should be fine. The Victron I'm looking at is pure sine which I have to have for my
fridge. I already have a 2800 watt pure sine wave.

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